RUYA MAPS Highlights: Contemporary Greek Artists
Stratos Kalafatis
Athos / The Colours of Faith. (2015)
The photographer Stratos Kalafatis (b. 1966) introduces his time at the Athonite Republic with ‘‘Men are not born on the Holy Mountain. They are drawn to Athos by their faith, their need, their curiosity, or their desperation.’’ This as much explains the attitudes of Kalafatis’ subjects as it does his own motivation for taking photographs of Greece’s 1,000 year-old male-only religious community. Through a series of 80 photographs he documents the asceticism of the monastic life, but his images are not defined by severity as the audience may expect. What stands out most about Athos/The Colours of Faith is the richness of the life it shows; in a series that captures the relationship between a man and his dog, the arrangement of flowers and gardening as much as it shows the harshness of the mountain vista and domineering religious iconography.
Having been visiting the site since the late Seventies, Kalafatis was encouraged to start photographing it - a test of his conviction ‘‘that this was not a place you could assimilate in photographs.’’ A turning point came in 2008, when over 25 journeys and 200 days and nights he became an observer and initiate into the community. Jokingly described as the Holy Mountain’s ‘‘official photographer’’ he witnessed vigils, saint’s day celebrations, miracles and revelations: ‘‘the images were just the pretext; the Holy Mountain was the reason why.’’
Bio: Kalafatis was born in Kavala, and is based in Thessaloniki, Greece. His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including 10th Venice International Architectural Biennale, Greek Participation, Backlight 7th Tampere International Triennial in Finland, 10th Edition of PhotoEspana, Museum of Modern Art, Fukushima & Saga, Japan, Bozar Expo, Brussels, Belgium. He has published 4 photography books in cooperation with Agra Publications: Archetypal Images (1999), Omonoia 2000 (2000), Journal (2004), Athos/ The colours of faith(2014). Since 2002, he has organized photography workshops both in Greece and abroad. Image Credit: Stratos Kalafatis
Theodoros Giannakis
L-R: "Venus Reclining", 2017, Acrylic on plywood, aluminium, 170 x 120 cm, "Rite of Passage", 2018, Aluminium, metalworking vise, 90 x 36 x 5 cm, "XXX Heritage", 2017, Cabinet, wood, aluminium, mirrors, 167 x 60 x 51 cm
Primitivism Mirage, (2018)
Primitivism Mirage was Theodoros Giannakis’ (b. 1979) first solo show, held at Eleni Koroneou Gallery in Athens. Inspired by the concept of ‘‘no-memories, those nurturing memories,’’ Giannakis identifies himself with the imagined primitivsim of the exhibition’s title. Speculating on the site where Western thought has collapsed in on itself, Giannakis’ work takes in circular communication, new technologies and reconstructed myths. Through paintings, sculpture and video society is presented as the pursuit of a mirage, which the artist identifies as ‘‘the latest, open beta-version cycle of an old myth.’’
"Venus Reclining" is part of a series that embeds aluminium relief casts within monochromatic colour. Using 3D fabrication and machine learning algorithms to define the colour palette, Giannakis renarrates myths that have shaped the collective human race. ‘‘Rites of Passage’’ is an alumninium sculpture that mimics ancient statuary - its fabrication made evident by the metalworking vise it balances on. Part of a separate series, ‘‘XXX Heritage" is a metal cabinet featuring mirrors, a cocktail and an ‘‘apotropaic mask of the Gorgoneion’’ a protective symbol that recurs throughout the artists recent work.
Bio: Giannakis graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts in 2009 and the London Metropolitan in 2011 with an MA in Digital Media Management. Giannakis is also a member of KERNEL, an artistic collective founded in 2009, Athens, alongside Pegy Zali and Petros Moris, and a PhD candidate in the Visual Arts Department of the ASFA. Image credit: Eleni Koroneou Gallery
Tassos Vrettos
Wor(th)ship, (2012-)
Established photographer Tassos Vrettos (b. 1957) records an invisible network within the city of Athens in Wor(th)ship. Conducting ‘‘fieldwork’’ in basements, garages, playing fields, courtyards, and ad hoc structures, he photographs places of worship that belong to the refugees and migrants who live in Athens. Vrettos has collaborated with a range of denominations, taking in Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Spiritualist and Christian groups. A truly collaborative effort, the photographer cultivated relationships with his subjects before he started to record them resulting in a body of work that respects the intimacy of practicing faith.
Far from the typical anthropological material which documents refugees, Vrettos’ series looks at the ‘‘primordial experience’’ of worship, rather than stages of migration such as arrival and departure. Often featuring groups of people, the images foreground the collective identity of believers through which they have established states of worship beyond the city’s surface. The Greek title of the series is an untranslatable pun that turns on “topoi [places] and tropoi [ways] of worship,” reflecting the etymology of the English word worship from ‘‘worthship’’ - the act of ascribing worth.
Bio: Vrettos was born, and is based in Athens. His most recent solo exhibitions include: Wo(rt)ship. Tassos Vrettos, Benaki Museum, Pireos street Annexe, Athens (2015) - Homo Ludens, public installation - City Link, Athens (2015); The Hole Argument, in collaboration with the Athens International Film Festival - Opening Nights, The Breeder gallery, Athens (2010). His photographic work has appeared in foreign periodicals such as Zoom, Creative Camera, Officiel, Jardin des Modes, Janus, etc., and a great number of Greek magazines. He has worked for music companies and advertising campaigns and collaborated with many dance companies. Image credit: Studio Vrettos.
Kostis Velonis
L-R: We Keep This Flame; Turmoil of the Blue; Debate on Chimneys; Puppet Sun. Photos by Panos Kokkinias.
A Puppet Sun, (2017)
Dealing with the afterlives of Modernist events, Kostis Velonis (b. 1968) is a sculptor known for creating narratives that link the past to personal experience. His sculptures are created using bricolage, drawing from the political connotations of the process that it was given by the Italian arte povera movement on the grounds that it bypassed the art world’s commercialism. Made out of readily available materials such as cardboard, wood, and small objects, Velonis’ sculptures re-assemble discarded material in a manner that is fitting for the artist’s historical revisionism.
The exhibition A Puppet Sun featured new site-specific works that were created for 11 Kaplanon Street, a neo-classical residence in central Athens. Formerly occupied by the first president of the Second Hellenic Republic, and later by one of the founders of the People’s Party, the political history of this built environment directly informs the works. Operating outside of the sphere of public authority, Velonis’ sculptures of upturned columns and model houses make the ‘‘subpolitics of everyday life visible’’ within the domestic sphere.
Bio: Kostis Velonis holds an MRes in Humanities and Cultural Studies from London Consortium (Birkbeck College, ICA, AA, Tate). He studied Arts Plastiques/ Esthétiques at Université Paris 8 (D.E.A). He earned his PhD from the Department of Architecture, N.T.U.A University of Athens. Velonis has lectured on the subject of domesticity in relation to avantgarde movements in the School of Architecture at the University of Thessaly and at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Image credit: NEON and Kalfayan Galleries.
Maro Michalakakos
L-R: Creating the body, and guests being served dinner at “Kiss Me Like You’ll Never Kiss Me Again” (2015). Photos by Nikolas Leventakis.
Kiss me like you'll never kiss me again, (2015)
Michalakakos (b. 1967) uses figurative allusion to create an apparent calm that is subject to a state of tension. A multi-media artist, she is perhaps best known for her distinctive use of red velvet fabric, whether gathered together into imposing mountains or shaved to reveal a faint image. Her figures take in erotic images and the domestic interior, mixing protection with pain.
A collaboration with 3 137 @ State of Concept, Athens, her performance Kiss me like you'll never kiss me again was a ritualised dinner ceremony. Lying at the centre was a plaster cast of her body “decorated with sugar, flowers and silver ‘dragées’…[and] filled with ‘Koliva’ made of wheat, pomegranate, and sugar nuts.” Guests were served food conventionally offered by the family of a deceased person following their funeral, before Michalakakos ‘‘brutally cut and tore apart [her] ‘body’,’’’ distributing its contents to the guests whilst a popular Greek song played. Described as a dinner about life and death, Kiss me like you'll never kiss me again recalls the artist’s background collaborating with theatre directors over set design.
Bio: Michalakakos was born in Athens where she lives and works. She studied Fine Arts in France (Ecole Nationale Supeireure d’Arts Plastiques Paris-Cergy) and Germany (Hohschule fur Bildende Kunst, Braunschweig) and her work has been widely exhibited in Europe, Turkey and the USA. In 2006 she was nominated for the Castellon County Painting Prize in Valencia, Madrid. Her works have been purchased by FNAC (Fonds Nationale d’art Contemporain, France) as well as by various private collectors and Institutions such as the Istanbul Modern. Image credit: Maro Michalakakos.
Panos Tsagaris
L-R: October 20 2011; March 8 1970, 2018; February 13 2012; September 12 2001. Images courtesy of the artist and Kalfayan Galleries.
Golden Newspapers
Panos Tsagaris (b. 1979) brings to bear his fascination with the Occult, mystical scientific principles and states of consciousness on current events. His art draws on the relationship between the sacred and the profane, offering a way to navigate the everyday through spiritualism. In the series Golden Newspapers the artist focuses on the first page of international newspapers, making it both the subject of his piece and its form. Covering the text and photographs of the page in gold leaf, Tsagaris creates a grid of unreadable news that exposes the page’s central photograph.
The artist explains that the newspaper series likens the transformations seen on the world stage ‘‘to the symbolic transformation in the Alchemical work (Opus Magnum), during which the undeveloped consciousness (lead) transforms into a fully developed consciousness (gold).’’ The gold leafing which characterises the work is a symbol of divinity, purity and wealth. Tsagaris uses it to draw a sophisticated comparison between the alchemists of old and modern audiences, both of whom try to elevate the everyday ‘‘impure self’’ through a purification process on a collective, as well as personal, level.
Bio: Tsagaris was born in Athens, but lives and works in New York. He received his BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada. Recent solo shows: “Let The Sun Protest”, Marie-Laure Fleisch Gallery, Rome (2016); “TIME”, Kalfayan Galleries, Athens (2016); “Studies in Symbology”, 68 Projects, Berlin (2016); “APOCATASTASIS”, Stems Gallery, Brussels (2016). Image credit: Courtesy of the artist.