Do König Vassilakis: The Review
The Golden Tears of Aphrodite
When I'm depressed by unpleasant weather, by the greyness of Paris, I instantly think about something that has always been rooted in me, something that causes small, pleasant injuries: Greece. One cannot say for sure what Greece is: perhaps a spiritual state, an enormous sea of nostalgia where the sweet, tragic song of the sirens comes out from under the skin of the sea, or where someone marmoreal waits for you beyond the windy shore.
Greece gives you terrible heartaches, a longing in the soul. For consolation we can turn to Kavafis, Theodorakis, Tsarouhis, those who have brought nobility back to modern Greece after a century of darkness. And then there is Do Vassilakis-König. It's as if she's gathered up Aphrodite's golden tears that have fallen to the depths of the sea, bits of light that wait for you in the waters of Ithaka, aural reflections fished out the immens eye of Vulcan. Hefestos bewitched her. And now, possessed of some antique secret, she works her objects and sculptures with exactness and simplicity, so that they seem to have always existed.
Surely they are cult objects of meditation: perhaps the shields of heroes fallen beneath the walls of Mycenae, or the votive offerings that burned on the mountain of Delphi. After years in Greece, Do has retained its thunderbolt, her eyes have taken on the hues of the deep sea. Her work is Greek in the modern sense; it has a strong emotional content; it's a deliberate gesture free of useless complication, sensual in its gleaming bronze color, in its round forms, tender, feminine, polished to the heart.
Do creates objects that are meant to be used. Few artists know how to do this. Hers is a unique world apart where the search for simplicity becomes beauty. Her works have always exited. We are grateful to possess them for their good and positive aura. With her works, Greece is closer, but also more mysterious. I long to know what she will do next, on what distant banks will she disembark.