Aristotelous Project

Group Show

18 November - 3 December 2016

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  ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
 

Three curators Panagis Koutsokostas, Areti Leopoulou and Eirini Papaconstantinou suggest 15 artists and share six rooms in Aristotelous Project Space, with the initiative of Kalfayan Galleries in Thessaloniki. In two rooms, each curator introduces artists through different concepts; yet all of them focus on the space itself, in its possibilities, dynamics and history, inside and outside every room, where this site-specific project is constructed.

 

Panagis Koutsokostas curates the section entitled Antagonism, which consists of sculptures and installations by four young artists: Vasilis Alexandrou, Anestis Ioannou, Vangelis Savvas and Dimitris Tzikopoulos. This exhibition section attempts to present the capabilities that are developed in the public sphere visually. The basic idea of the exhibition is to search for the rationale of a democratic society in the context of activation and maintenance of different concepts and ideas, conflicts and antagonisms. The public space remains political, when the fundamental principles of democracy and freedom exist in it, and when people claim their rights and have the ability of self-determination. In this section, the four young artists use materials from the urban environment or from the general public sphere and convert them, in order to claim symbols, to construct uprising monuments, to challenge spaces and to create gestures against every form of oppression and enforcement.

 

Areti Leopoulou curates the section entitled Greek post (trans. Greek post as well as Greek "meta"), which consists of the following artists: Civil Service Penthouse (music-sound), Elias Mamaliogkas (drawing), Virginia Mastrogiannaki (performance-video documentation), Natasha Biza (installation), Anastasis Stratakis (drawing, animation), Marinos Tsagkarakis (photography). This section is an attempt of a conceptual game with the prior use of the space, in situ; there were hosted for many years the administrative offices of the Hellenic Post organization, and they have obviously left their signs of use and life on the walls and on every inch of the rooms. Historical records, odds and ends of tourism, the financial and political situation of the country throughout a century, stereotypes regarding the national and cultural identity, bureaucratic and aesthetic clich?s about what we consider and characterize as "state", are the main components of the artworks presented. And all the projects "post" messages for the Greek post-reality through a realism that leaves the field open to any direct or indirect critique.

 

Eirini Papakonstantinou presents the section It began as a mistake, and includes the works by the following artists: Lambros Asimakis (drawing), Efstathios Michailides (drawing), Stella Ouzounidou (installation), Dimitris Fragakis (digital printing), Vassilis Hatzopoulos (video). The title of the exhibition originates from the sentence, with which Charles Bukowski launches his book "Post Office". On the occasion of the exhibition space?s previous use where a post office used to be in the city center, the artists ''read'' a classic book and comment on the harrowing condition of the human existence in the suffocating environment of state institutions, where the possibilities of creativity or freedom of expression are limited. They react to individual?s complete enslavement and inaction for the sake of standardized service and brute bureaucracy.  They resist towards the drain of the human soul and the individual?s function as a tool within the cold and impersonal work environments where interpersonal relationships are unrepeatably affected and fragmented. They underline the decay and alienation experienced by nowadays individuals, their constant and without effect efforts to self-determination and liberation from the compulsion of the ordinary lifestyle and working conditions imposed by the system.