Vicky Christou: Continuum

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Vicky Christou, "Blue Rising," 2020

acrylic on panel, 48" X 48"

In Vicky Christou’s new body of work, titled Continuum, the artist's work with the post-modernist form of the grid explores visual themes of infinity and domestic crafts.

This motif – her commitment to which has become a performative record of her mark-making and painting history – has become an integral platform for her personal visual metaphors; a structured framework in which architectural silhouettes are entwined with spontaneous brushwork, the order and rhythmic patterns of which echoes visually to create the illusion of a woven image.  

Working on a larger scale, these bas-relief sculptural compositions adopt a newfound physicality, unfolding into spaces through which the viewer is able to glimpse partially hidden interiors made of light washes of subtle colour. 

The application of the overlayed grid is at once a protective cloak and a formal pattern that defines and secures the impasto lines of paint. The tension between this held enclosure is at once limiting and liberating in its repetitive, continuous patterning – duality ad infinitum.

Christou invites the viewer through the portal of her paint surface into an illusory environment of rich interiority, contemplative stillness, and vast depth, one with no beginning or end; within the shifting subtleties of Christou's grid complex dwells a profound and resonant sublime.

Vicky Christou is a mid-career artist whose work explores the illusionary play between colour, proportion, and pattern. Christou constructs a dimensional surface within the pure form of the grid by meticulously applying layers of lines of acrylic paint by hand, synchronized to one full meditative breath. A record of accumulated paint lines are seemingly cast out for a thematic search of the netted form, inviting an optical play between the pigments solidity and illusionary characteristics. With dozens of painted marks repeated, Christou’s highly textured surfaces culminate into an artifact of making which defy traditional distinctions between painting, sculpture and craft.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Christou immigrated to Canada in 1969 and is a graduate of the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. She lives and works in Vancouver.