AA tutor Hamed Khosravi has curated a new exhibition on the works of Zoe Zenghelis titled ‘Do you remember how perfect everything was?’, opening at Betts Project Thursday 3 December 2020. This is the first retrospective on Zenghelis’ work, which will be exhibited at the AA in January 2021, along with a book featuring the work from the exhibition, published by AA Publications. Stretched between abstract metropolitan tectonics and landscape structures, the selection of Zenghelis’ paintings in the exhibition represent an inquiry into absent architectural projects, including work from the 1960s, her time at OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) and recent work from 2020.

“In Zoe Zenghelis’ contained paintings, there is, again paradoxically, a suggestion of space stretching far beyond our perception, a celestial city, without limits. The eye is as absorbed by the space between the forms themselves, set into informal procession. But it is picture making beyond the stage, set somewhere between the contrived and the natural, the abstract and the representational. These imaginary spaces are inspired as much by the urban grid of London, the cities of concrete, as the islands of the Ionian Sea, their whiting gleaming houses bleached by light, the surrounding water both absorbing and reflecting the glittering sky.” Marina Vaizey, 1992

From 1982 to 1993, in partnership with Madelon Vriesendorp, Zoe Zenghelis ran the Colour Workshop at the AA.

'Do you remember how perfect everything was?' Opening Thursday 3 December 2020 (booking essential)
3 December 2020 — 30 January 2021

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Image: Zoe Zenghelis, 'Orderly Blocks', Oil on Canvas, 2020