to SEE or NOT to see

About

Elena’s paintings explore certain codes of behaviour inside the museum in a playful manner. When visiting exhibitions she becomes a voyeur looking for interesting scenes that catch her attention and takes photos of people without them noticing. She later uses these photos as source material for her paintings, which make reference at how we’re looking and interacting with the world around us, touching themes such as the way we look at art through modern technology. The paintings also reflect spaces of quietness and stillness that hold a poetic element, inviting us to meditate and create our own narrative. The artist says: ‘I’m fascinated by the parallelism created between the moment the viewer faces my paintings and the scenes represented, realising they have become part of the work and that they’re probably being observed by an audience.’

‘If we discover how we see paintings we shall also discover something about ourselves and the situation in which we are learning’ – John Berger.