FORMA: Objects in Conversation by Marilena Michopoulou and Dora Haralambaki

Artist list

Dora Haralambaki, Marilena Michopoulou

Marilena Michopoulou and Dora Haralambaki present sculptures and jewelry pieces that emerge from years of research into materiality, craftsmanship, and the symbolic power of the object. Their encounter highlights two different artistic languages that converge around a shared inquiry: the ways in which an artwork can convey memory, knowledge, experience, and cultural meaning through its very material presence.
 
The title of the exhibition derives from the Latin word forma, a term that runs throughout the history of aesthetics, philosophy, and art. It refers to shape, structure, organization—the way in which something acquires presence in the world. In this exhibition, forma is approached as an active process. Each work is the result of a sequence of decisions, technical knowledge, gestures, and material transformations that remain visible in its final form. Clay, glazes, icon-painting pigments, silver, bronze, and acrylic colors compose a rich material vocabulary through which the creative process takes shape. Surfaces bear traces of handling and intervention, incisions function as inscriptions, colors generate rhythms and intensities, while fire completes a process that connects manual labor with the passage of time.

The meeting of these two artists highlights a broader direction within contemporary artistic practice, where the boundaries between sculpture, small-scale sculpture, and art jewelry become sites of creative expansion and experimentation.


Opening: Thursday, June 18, 2026, 19:30 h.


Marilena Michopoulou is one of the leading figures in contemporary Greek ceramics, with a career spanning more than three decades dedicated to the exploration of volume, structure, and the relationship between artwork and space. The works presented in this exhibition, created from stoneware, glazes, icon-painting pigments, bronze, and silver, reveal a profound understanding of materials and their expressive potential. The characteristic incisions and blue chromatic pathways that unfold across the surfaces of her works evoke an internal system of organization—a structure that permeates the volume and connects the individual element to the whole. The presence of metal and gilded surfaces introduces additional layers of materiality, highlighting the relationship between ceramic tradition and contemporary sculptural practice.
Through her long-standing educational activity at the "Ceramic Forms" studio, as well as her participation in significant exhibitions and events in Greece and abroad, Michopoulou has become a reference point within contemporary Greek ceramics. In this exhibition, her jewelry appears as a natural extension of her sculptural research—works of a smaller scale that retain the same structural thinking and commitment to material exploration.

Dora Haralambaki has developed a distinctive artistic language in which art jewelry and small-scale sculpture function as complementary aspects of the same creative process. Her sculptures and jewelry, made from clay, acrylics, icon-painting pigments, varnishes, glazes, bronze, and silver, form a body of work characterized by strong material and sensory presence. Surfaces evolve through successive layers and treatments, while her characteristic red chromatic elements serve as a recognizable and recurring feature of her artistic practice.

Beginning with a background in painting and later studies in jewelry design, Charalambaki has cultivated an artistic identity that consistently moves between art jewelry and small-scale sculpture. Her participation in international exhibitions and her long-standing educational activity through the Craftit studio have contributed significantly to the promotion and development of contemporary art jewelry in Greece.