On Sunday 5 April, 2026 we open a new exhibition with works by Mark Lammert (Berlin), Sofia Simaki (Athens) and Judith Zillich (Vienna). You are welcome to join us at 5 pm on Sunday.
In this exhibition, we present the work of three painters with an interest in physicality, evoked through the human figure, objects, shapes of color, and paint as such.
Berlin-based artist Mark Lammert has a special relationship to Greece. In 2009, he created the stage and costume designs for Aeschylus’s The Persians, directed by Dimiter Gotscheff at the ancient theater of Epidaurus. While working on the project, he made a series of works with oil paint on paper loosely related to the actors and the clothes they wore. A selection of these works from the Epidaurus series (2009) is presented in this exhibition. The figures themselves are not depicted, yet their physical movements are evoked through small, organic color patches. In Lammert’s painterly work, often only part of the human figure appears, a floating shape that moves through space and escapes singular identification. The artist was born in Berlin where he still lives and works. As a professor he teaches painting at the University of the Arts. His work has been exhibited in Germany and abroad among others at the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon (Fragments d’Espace, 2005) and at The Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (Balance, 2022).
The exhibited watercolors by Sofia Simaki started with the idea of windows as a source of light, as seen from the inside perspective. What is defined by paint is the space around the window, a figure in a room waiting or resting or suffering a stressful moment. In a number of works, the actual window is not painted at all, but appears simply as a rectangle of white, untouched paper, the lightest part of the work. The artist uses the specific qualities of the water-based medium to set the atmosphere, creating work about light in relation to psychological states. Paradoxically, it seems that the less she is present as the director of the scene, holding back on details, the more expressive or suggestive power the scene gains. Simaki lives and works in Athens. She works in painting, film, and other media. As a teacher at the University of the Aegean, she is a regular visitor to Syros. Her work was shown in multiple exhibitions, among others at the Chrysantopolous Mansion, Pyrgos, Evia (The Inner Side of the Wind, 2024) and in Athens at TAF, the Art Foundation (A Field Guide to Getting Lost, 2018).
In each work from the Chairs/Bodies series(2023–26), Judith Zillich presents the image of a single chair, executed with oil paint on paper. After the motif was painted, its contour continued to expand, the oil absorbed by the paper and creating an aura around the painted form. Through the years, Zillich has painted domestic objects in complex interior settings, where a table, chairs, or an air mattress balance around a human figure. For the artist, the presence of a living model and the objects in her studio are closely connected, not really treated in a different manner. Both have skin or surface, and they might share a color. In the design of a chair, the body of the sitter is already anticipated. The angle from which the artist has looked and the formal elements she has chosen or left out define how familiar or strange the chair looks and what associations it produces. Born in Graz, Zillich studied philosophy and painting, and lives and works in Vienna. She has a teaching assignment in drawing at the New Design University in St. Pölten. Currently works of the artist can also be seen in exhibitions in Kultum in Graz (Gott hat kein Museum; Aspects of Religion in Contemporary Art, 2026) and in Kunsthaus Gmünd in Kärnten (Girl. Woman. Other; Iconic Portraits of Women from Matisse bis Alex Katz, 2026).
The exhibition is curated by Jurriaan Benschop, who works as a writer and exhibition maker between Syros and Berlin.
Previous exhibitions:
This exhibition focuses on the shifting meanings of objects. Five artists present works that highlight objects in their physical presence, prompting viewers to consider both what is represented and how material qualities contribute to meaning. Many of the images in the exhibition resist clear identification. In a context shaped by the rapid circulation of digital images, the exhibition draws attention back to the physical qualities of objects and their role in shaping our perception. Touch and tactility are essential to how we connect with our surroundings and understand the world.
Lia Kazakou, Untitled (2025), oil on canvas, 45 x 35 cm.
The motifs in the works of Lia Kazakou (Greece, 1980) at first seem clear and identifiable – fragments of clothing, the front view of a dress, a single sleeve, the folds around two buttons. Yet the way the artist portrays the items imbues them with ambiguity. We do not get to see the person who is wearing the garments. Is there an individual involved at all, or is the painter just focusing on the materiality of the clothing? The framing is very specific, with a “harsh” cut that highlights the abstraction of the work, the way the lines develop, or the shadows that are cast. The atmosphere, supported by light and color, does suggest that we are looking at scenes from life, at parts of a story in which the paintings represent a moment of suspense. Kazakou is based in Thessaloniki and regularly shows her work in exhibitions in Greece and Germany.
Jenny Eden, Hunebed (2022), oil on calico, 40 x 30 cm
One of the paintings by Jenny Eden (United Kingdom, 1978) is called Hunebed – after the Dutch word for dolmen – as a way of suggesting a tomb-like chamber. The central area shows a ruptured space that could represent animal or human innards, a dissection opening out and tunneling backwards. Yet other ways of reading the figuration are also possible, an important quality of the painting. It never comes to rest, instead presenting a shape in motion, and it is full of contradictions in terms of psychology, being gentle and raw at once. The Manchester-based artist has a slow and patient painting practice, and sometimes it takes months of careful consideration before the painting is released, as if it can only fall into place through the long looking. Even though references to specific objects might be part of the works, once the paintings are finished, they appear as objects in themselves, and less as depictions. Eden is a lecturer at the Manchester School of Art, and she is co-director of Oceans Apart, a gallery in Salford dedicated to contemporary painting.
José Heerkens, Green for Veronese (2025) oil and gloss on plywood
For José Heerkens (The Netherlands, 1950), the horizontal has always been important in the composition of a painting, not just for orientation and balance, but also to evoke a sense of freedom and to create space to breathe. She is not so much interested in the illusion of depth (as through a horizon in a landscape), but rather in opening up the work to make it wide and generous. In her practice, the artist looks at how colors in different gradations or combinations work together on the surface. And what kind of effect they have when you spend time looking at them, their different rhythms and slight nuances changing. Heerkens works both on life-size canvases and on small-size panels like those in this exhibition. She aims to present color as purely as possible, without leading viewers to think about specific objects,figures, or landscapes. Her paintings are objects in themselves that live outside the realm of names. Colour: Free and Connected, an important retrospective of her work, was shown in the Kröller Müller Museum in The Netherlands in 2023.
Paula Zarina-Zemane, Blue, ca. 20 x 15 x 3 cm
As a painter, Paula Zarina-Zemane (Latvia, 1988) has an interest in landscape and the human figure, but at the same time, she values painting in a more abstract sense, as a play of forms and colors. The movement involved in the process of making a painting, with the speed it suggests and the depth or flatness it evokes, is part of what she wants to show. Both deliberate actions and accidents play a role. In recent years, Zarina has expanded her practice from canvas and wood panels to ceramics, further developing the oval forms we know from her paintings. They appear as containers of life, some resembling wombs or female genitalia, while others look like faces or have an affinity with the structures found in marble or other stones. The works in this exhibition are witness to special moments of creation, caught in compact objects. Based in Riga, Zarina-Zemane has shown her works across Europe.
Davide Girardi, Passage, 2023, collage and acrylic on board, 24 x 30 cm
After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Davide Girardi decided to work some years for himself. He developed a body of work, mostly small and intimate in scale, from which two pieces are now presented for the first time in an exhibition. In Girardi’s approach collage and painting go hand in hand. He has been drawn to this method because it allows to create a tension between the destruction of an image and its reconstruction. In this process layering and depths are of high importance. The space created in his works can be read in different ways. Images like an interior or landscape are at the basis and create a sense of familiarity, yet their execution brings in an element of the unfamiliar or present a balance that is in the process of being challenged.
Things as They Are (part 2), curated by Jurriaan Benschop, is on view from 20 September till 10 November, 2025. On Thu 6 November, Jenny Eden will give an artist talk (start 8.15 pm, free entrance). On Sun 9 November we speak with Davide Girardi about his work, and we close the exhibition with a drink (start 5 pm, free entrance).
Send us an e-mail to stay informed about events, or follow us on instagram (jenny_up_the_hill).
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS
TREE OF LIFE
The inaugural exhibition of Jenny up the Hill on Syros, Tree of Life, brings together the work of four contemporary painters. They share an interest in elementary, natural motifs which, transformed in paint, become reflections on life and mortality and questions of belonging.
11 April till 7 July, 2025
Over the centuries, artists have found a starting point in nature from which to create their art. Whereas, in the nineteenth century, painters inspired by nature were almost automatically landscape painters, in contemporary art there are many ways in which an eye for nature, or a foot in it, or a magnifying glass on it, or a thought of it, is expressed. The four artists in the exhibition have a connection with nature that has taken various forms over the years, be it focused on the dynamics of perception, on spiritual or symbolic meaning, or on connecting to older sources of wisdom.
Through their work the artists evoke different ways of being rooted, or aligning with the environment. The works are celebrations of color, form and the difference that art can make by saying things without words.
Participating artists: Béatrice Dreux (Vienna), Marc Mulders (Baest, the Netherlands), Lucas Reiner (Los Angeles/Porto) and Maria Vyrra (Athens). Curated by Jurriaan Benschop at Jenny up the Hill in Ermoupoli, Syros. On view till 6 July 2025.
Maria Vyrra, Silent Calla, 2024, oil on canvas, 200 x 140 cm
Image: Beatrice Dreux, Urbaum (Roots), 2020, 37 x 30 cm
Marc Mulders, Ourobouros, 2024, water color 65 x 50 cm
Lucas Reiner, Exile, 2012, woad on paper, ca. 23 x 22 cm