Golden China, notosgalleries-notoshome

"Athens-Beijing" restoration

ATHENS – BEIJING
an installation exploring the theme of migration

main hero: Chan

The interactive installation entitled Athens-Beijing by the visual artist Harris Kondosphyris was initially exhibited in Cheap Art Gallery, Athens (2004) and was then presented at the 26th Biennial of Sao Paulo (2004) as the official Greek proposal curated by the art historian and critic Irini Savvani; it was also shown in the 2nd International Beijing Biennale (2005).

Athens-Beijing is a two part installation:
Migrant’s Ark
Heart of Dark

Hear of Dark, the second part of installation, is more confrontational, presenting its viewer with life-size human figures reflected in dented, ripped and scarred sheets of stainless steel. Forming the social counterpart to Migrant's Ark architectural landscape, Heart of Dark obliges the viewer to join the current multicultural, global community.

Heart of Dark is exhibited at notoshome department store.
The work has been reconstructed by notosgalleries and notoshome department stores to be presented again to the Greek audience and donated to a beneficial to the public institution, such as a museum, a school etc.

Presentation of the work:
Thuesday 15 of May 2008
notoshome department store, Kotzia square
19:00

tomorrow will be a wonderful day

Nikos Navridis

And so we all went together; Marina, Eleni, Penny, Efthymia, Aggeliki-Irini and Thomas could not come-to Nikos Navridis’ exhibition “…tomorrow will be a wonderful day…”

The gallery is located in a spotless landscape. It stands across the big earthy church on Eptahalkou Street that is trying to touch the sky, and the small celestial church floating spontaneously on the adjacent street rock already touching the thought. We were there, visitors of the space and of Nikos Navridis’ mind. The exhibition was filled with flow lines, inexhaustible and unwalked, treated like objects. They wound up in the intellect’s receptacle, eliminating the boundaries, leaving wide open the mind’s eyes. I looked at the receptacle alternating my view from eye to eye…Otherwise I would float adrift in the illusionary river of his venous thoughts.

Harris Kondosphyris
Skouze Hill, Athens

Bernier/Eliades Gallery
Nikos Navridis
April 10 - May 16, 2008

The accident

Unwillingly I tilted my head, the way we do when our nose bleeds. The clouds were shining brightly and looking at them I immediately feared that this brightness would bring on the night.

I turned on the round square in Metaxourgeio, the one that organizes the center’s western axis. The congested road outside the national theatre descends lightly and pours into the square.

Among the cops’ leather shiny trousers I saw Sakis, the hero of “Toutouis” I had painted a few weeks ago. He was sitting on the pavement. I had the sense that his one leg was heavier than the other. The thick blood had dried on the soft nose bone. Lisa was looking.

Sakis’ tricycle looked like an overturned wheelchair. Sakis was insistently asking his wife’s attention who was ignoring the accident. “I am poor,” he said “and I wish I were drunk”. The wheelchair gaped open. It functioned as a port baggage of his childhood years. I was taking pictures.

We walked on the grass for a bit. A light afternoon breeze was blowing our hair. Sakis was still sitting and had wheels on his thighs. The grass had hardened like the one that grows in the swamps. The bright square looked like a clearing. The people who had gathered at the place of the accident were rooted like a forest’s young trees. Lisa looked on like a calm wolf. The swallows were flying high in the sky. We were in the city.

Games Without Frontiers

Zoumboulakis Galleries

PRESS RELEASE

“GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS”
Opening Thursday 3 April 2008 at 8.00pm

Zoumboulakis Galleries proudly presents the group exhibition “GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS”.

Fifteen Greek artists invent with their works a playful game of no limitations: tricks, illusion, escape, experience, vision, overturns, humor, assertion, sensation, intellect, flesh, melancholy, madness, gesture: the indication of time and seconds, the uneven reflected image in the game, all blend in with Peter Gabriel’s song aiming to retrieve from memory what Andre Breton wished to be his playful journey in art: the happy song of waiting, the song that deceives time.

Although the idea of game and play is ultimately connected with infancy, and from time to time with forbidden expressions of adulthood, it is nevertheless rather connected to performance. Boundaries, limitations, frontiers, although defined, remain fluid, constantly challenged by the subconscious process of expression, which annuls or narrowly surpasses the dominion of reality. The idea of time extends, signifying the nature of the game itself that desires to be prolonged perpetually. The idea of logic is disrupted or tends to be insignificant, despite the logical structure of the game. The rules are to be redefined and reinvented, only to be violated again candidly or clandestinely via repetition and escapade. Every game is a repetition of the familiar, expressed as the unfamiliar, the unexpected and the hazardous; often evolving into a nightmare, just as sleep produces such monstrous representations. Every game spins a study of death.

Artists: Alexandros Avranas, Diamantis Aidinis, Nikos Alexiou, Giorgos Gyparakis, Christina Darra, Lillian Likiardopoulou, Harris Kondosphyris, Tina Kotsi, Apostolos Papageorgiou, Stavroula Papadaki, Maria Papadimitriou, Nikos Papadimitriou, Dimitris Tataris, Kostas Christopoulos, Alexandros Psichoulis.

Curating and text by Thanos Stathopoulos

Exhibition Duration: 3 - 24 April 2008
Zoumboulakis Galleries, 20 Kolonaki Square

Opening Times:
Tuesday - Friday, 11.00 – 14.00 & 18.00 – 21.00
Saturday 11.00 – 14.00
Sunday & Monday closed

Alligator, 2007

A Vista of Perspectives

The 6th Shenzhen Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition: A Vista of Perspectives open on December 16, 2007 at the main exhibition hall of the OCT contemporary art terminal. This exhibit is organized by the He Xiangning Art Museum and the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, and co-organized by the Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town Group Co. and Overseas Chinese Town Real Estate Co.

Since 1998, the Shenzhen contemporary sculpture exhibition has been a hallmark event for the He Xiangning Art Museum, and has served as a standard for large-scale international exhibitions of contemporary art in China.
The theme of this year’s edition, A Vista of Perspectives, embodies a dual significance.

First, the influence of China’s process of modernization on people’s lives has been particularly evidenced by the epistemological worship of the individual’s infinite abilities and the ceaseless exploitation of natural resources. What is critical, however, is the loss of control concealed within the propagation of China’s modernization. Artists confront a reality beset with a rapidly developing economy that at once assaults and subverts traditional ideas and lifestyles. The conflict and pressure located in these conditions are evident: on the one hand, people are eager for a higher quality of life, enjoy convenient urban utilities, and partake in modernized consumerist practices. On the other hand, the inevitable competition within this process engenders a spate of social problems and the emergence of unexpected issues: cultural pluralism is being threatened with extinction, the cultural conditions in both urban and rural areas are undergoing immense pressure, and the cultural spirit and moral principles embodied within a simple and unaffected lifestyle are under attack. In the face of this spiritual crisis, it seems that we are all positioned within the dangerous state of being out of control.

Second, the artistic impulse for creation arises from a conflict between reality and the artist’s own self. Artists in this exhibition insert “natural forms” into the cityscape through the concept of “non-sculpture” or “transcending sculpture.” “Natural forms” refers to the transformation of our previous visual understandings of sculpture by utilizing natural materials to convey complex and poetic ideas. It also presents artists’ attitudes towards the relationship between urban planning and nature, their deep commitment to the power and form of nature, and an exploration into the possibilities and experimental nature of sculpture. Deriving from and reflecting on nature, these works are positioned between the man-made and natural worlds. They seek to arouse people’s respect and love for nature, and to reconfigurate the vanishing environmental ecology, and create a new opportunity for people to meditate on the past and reconsider the future.

photos:
"Alligator, 2007" artwork by Harris Kondosphyris for the 6th Shenzhen Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition