The Chase

Mary Christea was born in 1949 in Athens. She studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts under the tutelage of N. Nikolaou and G. She continued with postgraduate studies in Berlin at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunste (1973-1975), in the studio of Raimund Girke. He also took courses in philosophy, art history and literature, studied piano at the National Conservatory and was taught acting, improvisation and kinesiology at the Tomi Theatre workshop. Her early work was painterly and primarily anthropocentric. She rendered the human body with shortenings, strong colour contrasts and expressionistic manipulation of the material, while light played a decisive role in her simple and rigorously structured compositions, usually of large dimensions, often showing influences from antiquity. Later, he also began to create works in space - constructions and installations - that sometimes moved in the realm of conceptual art and sometimes went beyond minimalist purity of expression, constituting assemblages. Without abandoning colour and drawing, he combines them with collage or mirrors and fuses worn materials, ready-made objects, plastic mesh, polyester, paper, metal, gold leaf, electric bulbs, photographs, video projections, sound, etc. In 1987 she presented her first solo exhibition at the Athens Art Gallery and since then a series of solo exhibitions in Athens and Thessaloniki, while she has also participated in numerous group exhibitions: International Festival of Electronic Art "Video Brasil" (Sao Paulo, 2001), "Silent Dialogues: Multimedia Portraits Throughout Time", American College (Athens, 2008), etc. She has also worked as a set designer and has illustrated books. Between 1990-1999 he taught free drawing at a private school. She has been a member of the visual arts group Indoors since 2007, and Indoors Plus since 2010. She lives and works in Athens.