Anna Charaktinou was born in 1978 in Athens Greece.
She studied Painting and Engraving at Athens School of Fine Arts, Stop Motion and Engraving at the University of Hildesheim in Germany, and Painting and Graphic Design at Universität der Künste in Berlin.
She holds a Meisterschülerin ( PhD) degree in Painting from Universität der Künste Berlin.
She divides her work and living between France and Switzerland.
Passionate with the delicacy and lightness of Paper and its transformation ability, I create dream worlds with symbolic representations and emotional intensity in space! My work focuses on mixed media on paper and an almost meditative cutout process. The paper dioramas, that i experiment with, are a world of powerful silence that gives birth to a mystical reality of fragility and beauty.
Archetypal symbolism, the agony of Existence, the atmosphere of old fairy tales, mystical female figures, birds and animals, flowers and fruits combined with human nature and merged with personal experiences, narrating stories about separations and associations, symbolic death and rebirth, life and love, the symbolic Metamorphosis.
Each work turns into a labyrinthine journey full of personal discoveries. Exploring the fragile nature of human existence, the multiple illusions of dreams, and the notion that all living creatures are interconnected and that every element in the internal and external world stems from the same source. “Nature contains a part of us and we contain a part of nature. There is a fragile, unseen connection between us all.”
As in an alchemistic laboratory mixed the light and the dark side of all things, the birth of the Universe- the birth of Existence, landscapes of dreams: a cabinet (world) of curiosities.
It is the uploading of an image, of what cannot be seen through the eyes of logic and fascinates us. The structure of my works is similar to the structure of a dream that happens underneath rational surfaces. It is about the transformation from the hidden into an image.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 Landschaft der Imagination- Paper Works, Arte-Wallhof Contemporary Art, Basel- Switzerland
2021 The Inside Out Ceremony - Paper Works and Bell Jars, The Blender Gallery Athens - Greece
2020 Jardin des Curiosités-Bell Jars, 1900 The Barber Shop Athens- Greece
2019 Metamorphosis of a Daydream-Etchings, 1900 The Barber Shop Athens-Greece
2014 Awakening in Eden – Paper Works and Bell Jars, Galerie Hirschmann Berlin - Germany
2012 The Fifth Element – Installation and Paper Works, Galerie Hirschmann Berlin - Germany
2010 Metamorphosis Paper Works, Galerie Hirschmann Berlin - Germany
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED)
2024 ” Chelsea Galerie Reloaded” homage to Jeannette Schmidt, Galery Projektraum54, Basel-Switzerland
