On Friday, 2 October 2026, at 19:00, Sianti Gallery opens its new exhibition season with “After the Celebration”, a solo presentation of paintings by Gogo Ieromonachou. As curator George Mylonas notes, this new body of work revisits references drawn from the European painting tradition, translating them into a contemporary visual language and opening them up to new interpretations.

Ieromonachou’s new body of work draws on an iconographic repertoire with a long history. Putti, elaborate hairstyles and mythological figures evoke the grand tradition of European painting, from Tiepolo to Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard. From this world, the artist retains what can still be reactivated: its theatricality, grace and abundance of detail. Historical models thus become the material for a painterly language that belongs decisively to the present.

Her relationship with this imagery also has deeply personal roots. Long before encountering the Old Masters in museum galleries, Ieromonachou had already come across their distant echoes in the Greek home: in porcelain figurines, decorative cherubs, reproductions of famous paintings and a domestic interpretation of European refinement. This early visual memory now finds its place within her painting.

In “After the Celebration”, the virtuosity and grace of these historical models retain their seductive power, but no longer their former sense of carefree ease. Bodies acquire weight, gestures become ambiguous, and figures are at times rendered with precision, at others receding into the materiality of paint. Figuration is pushed to the point at which form begins to lose its boundaries. The body emerges from colour and, in places, dissolves back into it, while the artist’s gesture remains visible on the painted surface.

As the curator emphasises, a central work in this new series is The Rape of Europa, in which the enduring symbolism of myth meets the present. Ieromonachou reactivates Europa as a symbol of desire, power and uncertainty, bringing the myth into a contemporary context. In doing so, the work poses a question that remains strikingly relevant: who carries Europe today, and where is it being taken?

Gogo Ieromonachou was born on the island of Kalymnos. She studied Mathematics before pursuing painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, graduating with distinction in 2016. She lives and works in Athens. “After the Celebration” is her fifth solo exhibition. Her works are held in the National Historical Museum and in private collections in Greece and abroad.