(GR) ΕΣΤΙΑ
1 Νοεμβρίου 2003
Κρίστα Κωνσταντινίδη
Στα «δικά μας»
Τα “πρωτοφανή» σε μέγεθος διεθνή εικαστικά γεγονότα, αλλά και οι σημαντικές – πλην όμως ξενόφερτες – συλλογές έργων τέχνης που έκλεψαν την παράσταση, φοβάμαι πως μας κράτησαν μακριά από αίθουσες με εκθέσεις δικής μας… παραγωγής. Κι είναι αρκετές αυτές που ξεχωρίζουν
Ξεκινώντας από την θεματική ομαδική «Ψέματα και αλήθειες» στη «Μέδουσα», με συμμετοχή των Γιώργου Γυπαράκη, Αννίτας Ξάνθου και Νάκη Ταστσιόγλου.
Στην ουσία, πρόκειται για τρεις αυτοτελείς ατομικές εκθέσεις με έργα δυνατά που, παραδόξως, δεν αλληλοαναιρούνται. Εξαιρετική, η αντιπαράθεση των δύο αντικρυστών επίτοιχων γλυπτών του Ταστσιόγλου, που σηματοδοτούν ένα πολύ ώριμο ενδοσκοπικό άνοιγμα την πορείας του. Ελκυστική απλώς, η βιτρίνα της γκαλερί, με τον χορό του “Αέρα”: ένα από τα σκέλη μιας τετραλογίας της Ξάνθου, βασισμένης στους φυσικούς νόμους. Το ποιητικό βίντεο του Γυπαράκη, κινείται στη σφαίρα του ονείρου “Luna Deducere”, τίτλος δανεισμένος από τις ωδές του Οράτιου, με εικόνες από το ρυθμικά επαναλαμβανόμενο παιχνίδι της κόρης με το φεγγάρι. Η δεύτερη του «Ελάχιστου», ως προς τη φόρμα, και την κίνηση.
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΤΥΠΙΑ
3 Νοεμβρίου 2003
Μαρία Μαραγκού
Σε εκθέσεις με θεματικό πλαίσιο αυτόν τον καιρό η Γκαλερί Μέδουσα.
Η Μαρία Δημητριάδη καλεί την Έφη Στρούζα, η οποία δουλεύει με τρεις συνεργάτες της γκαλερί, τους Γιώργο Γυπαράκη, την Αννίτα Ξάνθου και τον Νάκη Ταστσιόγλου.
Και οι τρεις δημιουργούν έργα, τα οποία δεν εμπλέκονται μεταξύ τους, με αποτέλεσμα να μπορεί ο επισκέπτης να δει τρεις μικρές ατομικές.
Ο Γυπαράκης με βίντεο και μια σκούπα που κινείται και βγάζει αβίαστο χαμόγελο στο θεατή, η Ξάνθου με ένα ποιητικό έργο σε διαρκή κίνηση στη διαμορφωμένη βιτρίνα της γκαλερί και Ταστσιόγλου με μια πύλη από πλεξιγκλάς που σου κόβει την ανάσα με την δύναμή της, στο απόγειο της ωριμότητας της δουλειάς του.
CITY PRESS
14 Νοεμβρίου 2003
Ίρις Κρητικού
Στην αίθουσα τέχνης Μέδουσα της Μαρίας Δημητριάδη συνεχίζεται έως τις 22 Νοεμβρίου η ομαδική έκθεση του Γιώργου Γυπαράκη, Αννίτας Ξάνθου και Νάκη Ταστσιόγλου, με τίτλο «Ψέματα & αλήθειες», που επιμελήθηκε η κριτικός τέχνης ΄Εφη Στρούζα.
Η έκθεση παρουσιάζει μια εικαστική τριλογία που πραγματεύεται αυτό που έχει οριστεί από τη σύγχρονη θεωρητική σκέψη ως η «οντολογική ατέλεια της πραγματικότητας». Πρόκειται για τρεις διαφορετικές καλλιτεχνικές προσεγγίσεις του «ψεύδους» που ενυπάρχει στις τρέχουσες δομές της φυσικής, κοινωνικής και πολιτικής πραγματικότητας, και της «αλήθειας» που η τέχνη αναζητά στο μύθο, το παραμύθι, την ουτοπία, και το όραμα. Οι τρεις καλλιτέχνες επινοούν ευφυή τρισδιάστατα περάσματα από έργο σε έργο και αναζητούν τα εναύσματα που ανοίγουν στη σκέψη ανεξάντλητες διαδρομές, Ορατός κατά τη διάρκεια της αναζήτησης αυτής είναι ο αναπόφευκτος ανταγωνισμός μεταξύ της διαδικασίας της δημιουργίας και του έργου τέχνης.
“Αληθινά Ψεύδη”
Μια απόπειρα ποιητικού αποπροσανατολισμού
Ήδη κατά τη δεκαετία του ’60, ο George Steiner στο έργο του «Η Σιωπή και ο Ποιητής» σημείωνε ότι «ζούμε σε μια κουλτούρα που γίνεται βαθμιαία μία αεροδυναμική σήραγγα κουτσομπολιού – ενός κουτσομπολιού που εκτείνεται από τη θεολογία και την πολιτική σ’ έναν άνευ προηγουμένου θόρυβο». «Αυτός ο κόσμος δεν θα τελειώσει ούτε μ’ ένα βρόντο ούτε μ’ ένα λυγμό, αλλά μ’ έναν τίτλο εφημερίδας, μ’ ένα σλόγκαν, μ’ ένα μυθιστόρημα της πεντάρας πιο χοντρό κι από κέδρο του Λιβάνου» έγραφε.
Με αφετηρία το συλλογισμό του Steiner, που υπενθυμίζει στο ίδιο έργο ότι «όταν οι λέξεις στην πολιτεία είναι φορτωμένες βαρβαρότητα και ψέμα, τίποτε δεν μιλάει δυνατότερα από ένα άγραφο ποίημα», σαράντα σχεδόν χρόνια μετά η επιμελήτρια της έκθεσης και κριτικός τέχνης Έφης Στρούζα επικαλείται τις «φωτεινές αυτές και επίκαιρες σκέψεις» στην πορεία αναζήτησης ενός εναλλακτικού δημιουργικού χώρου, ικανού να αντιταχθεί σε ένα καθεστώς καλλιτεχνικού ολοκληρωτισμού. Επιλέγει έτσι να απευθυνθεί σε καλλιτέχνες που υπό μια έννοια αποτελούν τους εν δυνάμει «ποιητές», στους οποίους αναφέρεται ο Steiner. Πρόθυμοι να εγκαταλείψουν μία «ατελή πραγματικότητα» παρατηρούν με ψυχραιμία το αδιέξοδο που προκύπτει καταμεσής της και επιβεβαιώνουν ότι «μόνη η τέχνη μπορεί ατιμώρητα να αμφισβητεί τις δομές της πραγματικότητας αυτής, να τις σχολιάζει νοητικά ή ρεαλιστικά, να προβάλλει οράματα στο κενό και να δημιουργεί μέσα στο χάσμα». Η εκθεσιακή ενότητα «Ψέματα και Αλήθειες» περιστρέφεται εν τέλει γύρω από ένα αέναο χαρακτηριστικό της τέχνης που κανείς δεν αμφισβητεί: τη θεμιτή της μετακίνηση ανάμεσα στο ψευδές και το αληθές.
Ξεφεύγοντας από τη λογική της «ενσωμάτωσης» που συναντούμε στις μεγάλες διεθνείς εκθέσεις, ο Γυπαράκης, η Ξάνθου και ο Ταστσιόγλου, εγκαθίστανται σε έναν «ου-τόπο» και εξετάζουν από κοινού τη μυθοπλαστική ιδιότητα της τέχνης, αποφεύγοντας να αποπροσανατολιστούν από το ψεύδος ή την υπερπληροφόρηση της καθημερινότητας. Ο καθένας χωριστά καταθέτοντας τον προσωπικό του μύθο, αναζητά την αλήθεια που βρίσκεται «κάπου αλλού». Απέχοντας από κάθε τάση ρητορίας, σχολιάζουν καίρια το γεγονός ότι η αλληλοδιαδοχή άπειρων εικόνων που κατακλύζουν την καθημερινή ζωή και εμφυτεύονται στη μνήμη χωρίς να έχουν βιωθεί, «καθιστούν όλους και τον καθένα ξεχωριστά μέτοχο και φορέα και το χειρότερο, χειριστή, ενός εικονιστικού ρεπερτορίου, που δεν του ανήκει». Εγκαταλείποντας, έτσι τις εικόνες που μεταφέρει η μνήμη και επιλέγοντας να μην λειτουργήσουν σαν «πλανόδιοι μεταπράτες μιας ψευδούς εμπειρίας», πραγματοποιούν μια κοινή παραβίαση, αντιπροτείνοντας «αληθινά» ψεύδη τέχνης και υιοθετώντας μία υπαινικτική ποιητική «άγραφων» σελίδων, που κατακλύζει θριαμβικά τα κενά της πληροφόρησης.
Μπροστά στα έκπληκτα μάτια του θεατή, μία σκούπα λικνίζεται μαγεμένης (εγκατάσταση) από το παιγνίδι ενός κοριτσιού με το φεγγάρι (video), στην ευφυή και απολύτως αληθοφανή αναπαράσταση του Γυπαράκη, που μιλά για την επιθυμία και το παιχνίδι στην τέχνη. Προτείνοντας μουσικά δέντρα, όπου τεχνητά φυσήματα καταργούν τη χρησιμότητα των περίπλοκων ενεργειακών μηχανισμών της σύγχρονης τεχνολογίας, η Ξάνθου αναπαριστά την απλή αλήθεια των νόμων της φύσης. Ο Νάκης Ταστσιόγλου εξυμνεί και ταυτόχρονα καταργεί τον ορθολογισμό της αρχιτεκτονικής λογικής, αναιρώντας τη διαχωριστική ιδιότητα των σκληρών υλικών (σίδερο), με τη χρήση της διαφάνειας και του φωτός (Plexiglas).
An attempt at poetic (dis)orientation by GIORGOS GYPARAKIS ΝΑΚIS TASTSIOGLOU ANNITA XANTHOU
(in the garden of fallen pleasures the poet of Hieronymous Bosch is tormented on his own harp) 1
As receivers of information on artistic production around the world we are repeatedly and emphatically assured, at every mass gathering of artists from all over the globe, that zero hour for art has been imminent for a long time now. At least, this is the overall picture according to many different but equally valid theoretical viewpoints.
For some twenty years now art seems to be ‘bluffing’ with media borrowed from the disjoined parts of a whole whose composition has been lost, broken up after constant additions, alterations and reworking of the original. The sense of loss has been with us for over a hundred years; the realisation of it reveals no unknown truth.
Yet what we fear most today is not the unknown but the commonly known and familiar. The exploration of the causes behind the formation of this known, familiar landscape through the examination of its social, political and physical traits and parameters can only use the method of deconstruction. At the dawn of the 21st century, however, all there is to deconstruct is the already disjointed parts of various ideologies and institutions which came off some central pillar of dominant thought, decades ago. Art may be going through a crucial, vital moment, but it does not show any signs of taking off. This may well be the most sincere attitude one may adopt while attempting to promote a collective space of topical discourse within the logic of major exhibitions. The major international shows cannot escape the logic of “corporatism”, because their lifeline is those bodies. In such cases art criticism is exercised within the framework of an ecumenical discourse which stresses the severance of the creative elements of society from the rational policies of the global ruling class. There is, however, an alternative creative space which should also draw our attention and be promoted on equal terms, not as a way of smoothing things over but more as meaningful action implemented as part of a characteristic of art that remains firmly impervious to external influences and has to do with one of art’s innate traits: its legitimate shift between false and true. Every reading of art history cannot help but recognise this privilege of the artist, no matter what artistic language he may choose to adopt in approaching reality in order to depict it, comment on it and analyse it, conceptually or realistically. This exhibition aims to describe the intellectual aspect of the work of three artists —Giorgos Gyparakis, Annita Xanthou and Nakis Tastsioglou— in the light of this approach to contemporary artistic act. The meaning of their coming together in the same show is not predetermined by any common course. As contemporary artists they have developed each their own personal idiom, and their field of action is a common reality: a reality characterised by the lack of a core ideology, the absence of concrete meaning or purpose in today’s escalating, frenetic mobility of populations and the impossible speed at which information is expected to be visually and intellectually perceived.
The common feature one can trace in their work is the way they handle the mythmaking property of art: within their different worlds we can discern their avowed abstention from the disorientation, falsehood and mental confusion, caused by excess information. Each artist separately, with his or her personal myth, signs their common awareness of the other reality of art, that which can always reveal that the truth is elsewhere. At the same time they abstain from every tendency to rhetorically promote a single concrete dimension of reality. They recognise as futile any attempt to seek a single truth in the chaotic reality which today is common ground for all. However, they also accept unanimously the fact that the succession of infinite images which inundate our daily lives, the images which are implanted in memory unassimilated, turn each and all of us into a bearer —and, even worse, an operator— of a repertory of images which do not belong to us. The images we carry in our memory today make us destitute, itinerant peddlers of a spurious experience.
The words of George Steiner remain current: we live in a culture that gradually turns into a wind tunnel of gossip; a gossip extending from theology and politics to an unprecedented noise… This world shall end not with a bang or a sob but with a newspaper title, a slogan, a penny novel thicker than a cedar tree1. Today, more than forty years since these wise and topical thoughts were expressed, we can only agree that when words […] are charged full of barbarism and lies, nothing speaks louder than an unwritten poem1. The encounter of the tree artists in this exhibition juxtaposes the lies of art to the lies of contemporary social and political reality. Yet the difference is that the artists are bold enough to refute as reality the image of a demarcated personal world, viewing the space taken up by each of us as aesthetically incomplete. The attempt to preserve any distinct individuality —and this distinctness is always the prerogative of every artistic being— in a common space can be convincing when it promotes a space of non-encounter, a non-locus dominated by a sense of vacuum —again, a vital vacuum— which gives some breathing space between ‘different’ things.
Through this encounter their action becomes meaningful as it unfolds subtly, almost in a whisper, without rhetoric tricks or outbreaks of realism, to seek those ‘unwritten’ pages, to demonstrate the poetics found in the gaps of information. I would describe this encounter as a joint violation, without any prearranged plan, of the ostensibly finalised character of contemporary reality. We have forged many truths and condoned many lies with the method of classifying art, thought and intellectual activities into collective lingual and theoretical patterns. Where are the limits of reality, social and intellectual, and where is its soul? The juxtaposition of the work of these three artists makes it obvious that the limits and the soul in art continue to shift to multiple lingual structures, multiple forms of behaviour. Their encounter in a non-locus legitimises the marriage of lie and truth as a privilege of art. With the open spirit of their work they manage to demonstrate the incessant shift of specific languages into the different, fabricated pedestals of an alternative truth. The passages between the works of the three artists create the necessary gaps which serve to underline the proximity of different things. The notion of a uniform ‘reality’ is abolished. It is as if some blank pages are opened, of the kind that cannot but exist in any non-totalitarian view of reality. In this way they venture to speak of regaining the right to wandering freely in the “incomplete reality” of the current flow of our history. It has been argued convincingly that the only way to really explain a state of freedom is to profess the ontological incompleteness of “reality”: reality exists only to the extent that there is an ontological breach, a crack at its centre
2.How big is the breach inflicted on a given reality by Gyparakis’ depiction of a broom that rocks back and forth, fascinated by the sight of a girl playing with the moon? What can be more real than this desire for inventive play that art is after?
What realities are hidden in the truth of nature’s laws, which Xanthou portrays through the lie of her artificial musical trees and the artificial gusts which undermine the utility of the complex energy devices of modern technology?
What can be at once more false and more true than the simultaneous praise and abolition of rationality in the architectural approach to the interventions attempted by Nakis Tastsioglou in natural space, whereby he abolishes the separating function of hard materials and structures, making use of light and transparency?
This kind of multiple exposure of the artist to the ‘incompleteness’ of every reality, internal or external, subjective or objective, can only stand the confrontation with the solid nature of the external structured environment, natural and social, through the validity of artistic action against the validity of the “unwritten” poem. And this confrontation points to a vital reality. It is this reality that is familiar to all three artists. It is this gift of the artist’s that it is worth re-evaluating. And it is this that is worth rethinking about.
Efi Strousa October 2003
LIES AND TRUTHS
GIORGOS GYPARAKIS
Giorgos Gyparakis presents two new works: a video called “LUNA DEDUCERE”, and the “Broom”. The title of the video is borrowed from a Horatian ode. However, the repeated nocturnal image of the girl who brings the moon down to earth and plays ball with it on a beach, had been made by Gyparakis before the coincidence was discovered between the imagery of the Roman poem and the contemporary artist’s repertory of images.
Together with the projection, a broom performs a languid crawling motion on the floor. A commonplace utility object of everyday use finds its way, as if enchanted, into the unexpected scene of the game with the moon. A common broom sheds its utilitarian character and turns into a weird “thing” which seems to flirt with another fantastic image, as if trying to decide whether to identify itself with the living or the inanimate beings. The abolition of the distinction between opposites —between man and objects, male and female, man and animal, mythical and actual space— has been a standard foundation and source of inspiration for the poetic visual art of Gyparakis since the first works of his mature phase, from 1994 to date.
In his works the visual language becomes a sharp and at the same time gentle tool with which he manages, without a trace of rhetorical veneer, to subvert all rigid and absolute views of any reality, subjective or objective. Art is presented like a huge melting pot of opposites, like a reflection of instinct in practice, of our animal and hormonal functions in the spirit, of the archetype in everyday activities, of the soul in matter and vice versa. For some ten years now the presence of Gyparakis on the art scene has contributed a fresh, distinctive and genuinely poetic view of the repetitive motif of ‘synchronicity’ between independent events, which are linked together by man’s primeval mental participation in the existing and the imaginary.
The two apparently unconnected works come together in an unexpected union into a non-locus. The encounter between the broom and the girl that plays with the moon on the beach triggers multiple associations. In this work, the artist reverses the import of images and objects before and after their creation, inside and outside the actual space and time in which they stand. Gyparakis turns things upside-down in such a desirable way that the reversal of the rational interpretation of things addresses one of the most real needs of the human mind: to transcend the limits posed by every rational hierarchy of mental constructs against the immeasurable breadth of the world of emotions.
Ε.S.
LIES AND TRUTHS
ΑΝΝΙΤΑ XANTHOU
The works with which Annita Xanthou participates in the exhibition could be described as four variations on the same theme.
Her “Musical Tree”, “Harp”, “Drops of Truth” and “Air” make up a tetralogy of a series of acts where the protagonists are the primary laws of nature in what seems like a conversation about the ‘miracle’ of motion and sound. The works of Xanthou draw the attention to the importance of understanding things through the empirical study of nature, whereby one acquires an infallible knowledge of the different properties of each element through interaction. Thus to the artist the ingredients of light, water, air and matter are not in themselves capable of providing an aesthetic experience. Light becomes thermal energy and causes the ascending course of a drop of water; the body of a tree becomes the channel for a musical sound; the wind promotes the rhythmic motion of a cluster of bands within a given space. A series of objects made of primary natural or technological materials make up the chorus in a performance which, in place of a commentary, relates a true story of interactions among the elements of nature. And yet the action of this story unfolds before our eyes like a fairy tale, like a series of ‘tricks’ performed by some conjurer who knows how to generate surprise, how to make the senses respond unresistingly before the primordial, the simple as well as mysterious marriage of truth and lies which is inherent in every mental or technical processing of the laws of Nature.
These works reflect the artist’s interest in the truths that emerge incessantly from every approach and penetration into the multiple signals transmitted by Nature. Her standard method —adopted almost instinctively since the works she exhibited in 1994, at her first solo exhibition, and even earlier, since her first ‘constructions’ at a very young age— is inspired by her own relaxed relationship with the natural world. In fact, the art of Xanthou is a reflection of her own lifestyle, her trained gaze and her visual language, developed through her extraordinary communion with nature.
The ‘wondrous’ element man discovers in the first years of his life and the ‘childish’ experience of early knowledge is gradually exposed to the threat of the specialisation of language and thought structures as creativity is divided into the discrete areas of science and art. To Xanthou, on the contrary, knowledge is revealed as the product of an empirical, holistic relationship with the wealth of information within nature. With her works she presents the action of art as a reflection of the action of nature, abolishing the lie of compartmented knowledge, which is the motive power of contemporary culture.
Ε.S.
LIES AND TRUTHS
ΝΑΚIS ΤΑSΤSΙΟGLΟU
In this exhibition Nakis Tastsioglou serves as the link between the rational and the dreamy approach to reality. His intervention in the space of the exhibition room, where the narration unfolds of the ambiguity between lies and truth, comes to create certain architectural passages that serve as tangible, geometrical structures of transition from actual to virtual reality.
The tools he uses to create a two-way course between the limits of geometry and their transcendence come from the range of lingual structures and materials which has characterised his work since the late’80s: geometrical sections in space and alternating solid and transparent materials are the elements with which he abolishes and at the same time multiplies the dimensions of the logic structures of space and the world. Two opposite walls are lined with metal panels. A vertical element made of Plexiglas on one of the panels reinforces the external geometrical balance of this visual arrangement, which appears to establish a new, balanced relationship among the given structural elements of the room. Yet this impression is deceptive, as each of these added covers contains a different inner story: a slot on the surface of each element functions like the aperture of a magic box. A ray of light comes through one side to define an almost invisible vertical line standing proud of the solid wall, while when the eye gets close to the slot it gets lost in a vast, amorphous chaos. On the opposite side there is another slot on the totally flat and plain surface. On approaching, the austerity of the external form suddenly disappears as the reflection of the gaze is multiplied inside the work. The artist thus reveals that a decisive factor in subverting the apparent, rational view of things is the inability to confine visual perception and hence our intellectual and psychological approach to the environment within predetermined limits.
In this specific encounter with a set of different, ambiguous visual signals, the artist gives even more emphasis on this age-old but always current question of going from one dimension to another. He builds in the three-dimensional space the transparent gate through which the viewer enters one more multidimensional visual experience. Two transparent triangles seem to deviate from the horizontal and vertical structures of the architectural space, falling sharply from the ceiling and pinning their tip into the floor. In this way the structural elements of the work become part of a physical experience within a space of many parts, where the sense of moving from a state of measure to the immeasurable, from the specific to its division into multiple extensions within real space, confirms in a simple, natural way the constant transition of the soul from the accessible to the inaccessible, from the verisimilitude of every construction, mental or physical, to the fallacy of things.
Ε.S.
