A prayer at the edge of the universe

This group of distinct polymorphic sculptures by Della Rounick, Andromeda and (the) Pleiades, inhabits, seduces and calms the gaze with the manner, the spare lambency and the mystical revelation of a eternal night constellation.

There is an exceptionally mature aesthetic at work here and a conceptual attempt to approach the transcendental definition of prayer, in order to proceed in a silent process to osmotically absorb and comprehend a primordial code of communication body-to-body and spirit-to-spirit between human and the divine under the open skies.

Maintaining her archetypal innovative iconological proposition, based on the sacred energy of fertility and the timeless instant of a personal prayer to the universe, yet moving powerfully over the past years from the act of painting to the therapeutic manual labour of shaping the human form in three dimensions, initially using plasticine and experimenting subsequently with the painstaking process of molding, in order to achieve the polished perfection and abstract expression that characterize the sum of her sculptures, the artist was led to a personal curved universe that permits the literal and spiritual viewing into the often unseen “inner country” of each sculpture.

Della Rounick’s hybrid sculptures, set up in the infinity of Mykonos, observe and absorb the world-birthing energy from nearby Delos, liquefying the curved displacement of their metal existence from a closed form to an open one and from white lambency to dark Erebus, bridging different cultures and battling religious beliefs; bearing charming names, which mine, elucidate and complete the Greek myths; at times passionately female and at other times with androgynous symbolism; always praying to their own minor deity, gain almost magical qualities.

They are living sculptures of an indelible creative adventure; a ritual prayer to the universe, which discourses with power and humility; cosmic chaos and feminine fertility; loss and sustainability; generosity and charity; expectation and patience; pleasure and pain; entreaty and satisfaction; but, most of all, with the capacity for an internal deification and joyfulness about the body, spirit and soul on the path to self-knowledge.

Iris Kritikou

June 2016