Υπερβολή / Exaggeration

Group exhibition

Opening: Wednesday October 16, 2013, 20.00Duration: 16.10 – 16.11.2013

The ARTWALL continues to reflect on multiple aspects of the urban land-scape as commented on by the work of contemporary artists. The ART-WALL is an active part of the city’s identity focused on communicating and documenting contemporary artistic expression. From October 16th to November 6th 2013, eleven Athenians (artists, architects, illustrators and designers) present the exaggeration they have distinguished in the city, within the framework of an exhibition entitled “Exaggeration”, at the Art-Wall Project Space in Athens.

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Fotini Kapiris/ ARTWALLKonstandinos KalfakakosMedia and communication supervisor / ARTWALL.

Fotini Kapiris designed and implemented the ARTWALL cultural agenda to meet the conditions and requirements in promoting contemporary artistic production. Fresh Hotel is actively supporting this effort thus creating a new art spot in the heart of the Athens city center.

ARTWALL Project Space26 Sofokleous str., 10552, Athens

Visiting hours:Tuesday - Friday 16.00-21.00, Saturday 12.00-16.00

Website: www.theartwall.grEmail: artwallprojectspace@gmail.com

EXAGGERATION

Visual interpretations of images, places or incidents that exceed the prede-termined limits of the beautiful or the ugly, converse in the exhibition space. They comment on the mosaic of Athens’ material, observing its structure and eventually play with the vague limits of the city, turning it into an im-mense landscape of exaggerations.

Already since the foundation of the newer Athens, the truths have lost their temper. The urban planning seems to stress the exaggeration of the an-cient glory and, at the same time, to set the bases for the creation of daily exaggerations of the contemporary city.

Exaggeration runs throughout Athens, from the last remnants of Kypriadis’ garden-city to the slaughterhouses at Filoppapos hill and from Eleonas’ junkyards to Athens’ only skyscraper. Despite its obvious existence, the defi-nition of Athenian exaggeration seems difficult. The exaggerations of Ath-ens overlap, rival one another, twist and entangle in an endless clew from which any observer retrieves the exaggeration that he, himself, actually wants to distinguish.

Participating artists: Stella Boroutzi, Christina Elefsinioti, Aristea Gravou,

Ani Krikorian, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Katerina Papazissi, Ino Theodorou, Ioannis Touliatos, Denia Tsekoura, Ersi Varveri, Maria Zaharogianni.

Curated by: Katerina Synodinou

[MATERIALS] The city of Athens looks like being constructed from a mosaic of materials: from the fragments of the ancient city, to the luxurious marble of the vain effort of her rebirth, and from there to the progressive tackiness of raw ma-terial characterizing her contemporary face. The exaggeration is hidden so much in the materials themselves, as in the way they co-exist. Their em-brace acts as a recollection, as a release of energy, as a pause for what has still to come. Nothing in Athens has finished.

[OBSERVATION]The structure of Athens acts as a deforming mirror of the reality, reflecting it in an excessive degree. The diffuse exaggerations end up in becoming integral pieces of the city itself. Through the exaggeration as an image, the fact loses its meaning many times over .

[INTERPRETATION] The exaggerations of Athens are, from their nature, open to various levels of interpretation. The idea of the city itself as an organised, independent entity refers perhaps to the severity and order, but, at the same moment its vague limits break the rules of their own existence. In Athens the contradic-tions are presented in their ultimate intensity. The urban landscape takes different forms depending on the point of view; the beautiful battles with the ugly and the real with the fantastic.

[INTERACTIVITY]Athens is an immense field of exaggerations, in which millions of persons add, remove and recompose private and public exaggerations on a daily basis. The impact of recomposition varies depending on the intensity of its initial source.

Ioannis TouliatosHe was born at Piraeus in 1965. He studied Graphic Design in the Faculty of Arts and Design (Technological and Education Institute of Athens). From 2005 to 2009 he studied the art of mosaic in Mosaic Center “Psifidon Gnosis”.He is a member of AIMC (L’Associazione Internazionale Mosaicisti Con-temporanei) and Greek Mosaic Association. He has participated in many group shows in Athens, Kefallonia and Pieria.

Ioannis TouliatosOmonia_Explo, 2012Mosaic, marble and coloured glass 28x100cm

Ino TheodorouBorn in 1984, in Athens, Greece. In 2010 she completed her studies in the Architecture Department of the University of Thessaly. Currently, she is at-tending the greek-french master “Art et Technologies de l’Image Virtuelle” in the Paris 8 Univeristy. In parallel with architectural creation, her interest focuses on the production of organic spaces, via the creation of interac-tive installations, as well as hybrid environments.

Ino TheodorouAwaiting, 2011copper, paper, plastic paint40x40x188cm

Ino TheodorouStranded Memory, 2013SOFTWARE/ Processing

Maria ZacharogianniShe is a visual artist that through video and performance explores the se-miotics of social structures and cultural heritage, creating environments where queries of identity take place in the socio political context of the postmodern. Graduated the Fine Art School Of Athens in 2008 with hon-ours. Has attended courses of theatre and performance with Monica Hunken, Dimitris Tsiamis, Ester Gonzales and others. Has attended seminars of new technologies- pure data, mapping. Member of Puzzle group by Ma-ria Lalou. Has participated in exhibitions such as the Biennale of Young Artists in Vari 2008 with Plastira group, Bios Performance festival, Aeschelea Art Festival, Circulo of bellas Artes in Madrid. Has also performed in open spaces such as the Styles of Olympiou Dios in Athens and the Artemision in the Peloponese.

Ifigenia Ifigenia today.. Wears short skirts, and her favorite color is blue. She has flowers pots on her balcony. She doesn’t water them often but they never grow dry. She lives in Koukaki. She drinks black coffee. And smokes two to four cigarettes a day. She has a weakness she pays the price added tax on bills. She reads articles of science. And she knows all the Greek trag-edies by heart without having read them. She hasn’t travelled a lot, only once in Insbourg following a deeply conscious impulse. She will travel two more times in her life. She has two close friends. And she will be told that she is loved twice. She will want to cry without succeeding both times, the first because she believed it and the second because she will be unable to believe it. She will have two partners, at different periods of time in her life, and she will never marry.

performing/ Irini Loizounarrating/ Dimitris Samir

zacharogianni-maria.blogspot.gr

Maria ZacharogianniIfigenia, 2013videoDuration 16’00’’

Katerina PapazissiBorn in Athens, in 1974. Studied Social Psychology (BSc) and Media and Communications (MSc) in the London School of Economics before moving on to Design Studies (MA) and Painting in the Athens School of Fine Arts. Studied in the Universidad de Pays Basco in Bilibao as an Erasmus Student. In her work, she deals with the concepts of duality, boundaries and eroti-cism, creating pictorial situations in which boundaries become permeable, in a meeting of the ‘One’ with its ‘Other’. This results in a pictorial universe characterized by a play of boundaries: between two dimensional image and three dimensional space, image and object, inside and outside, fan-tasy and reality, figuration and abstraction.www.katerinapapazissi.com

The series of three dimensional photo-objects ’Algedon’ (2009-2012) con-sists of 70 pieces, created by combining two, in each case, photographs from the artist’s personal archive, Pairing shots of the urban landscape, especially that of her city, Athens, with shots of nature and the body, she opens up the flat space of the photograph to create intermediary spaces between the imaginary and the real. Images of the series are also con-structed in larger (1x1.5m) three dimensional photo-constructions .

The work “Omonoia”- Unity, 2013 in contrast to the photoobjects the artist creates, does not consist of photographs that she herself has shot but of two found images.

Katerina PapazissiOmonoia (Unity), 2013Collage 28x28cm

Katerina PapazissiAlgedon/ From The Invasion series , 2009-12Photograph, balsa wood pieces (support), wooden boxes (frames)15x13cm

Katerina PapazissiAlgedon/ The Morning After the Deluge series, 2009-12Photograph, balsa wood pieces (support), wooden boxes (frames)10x15cm

Aristea GravouShe was born and raised in Athens. She studied Networks and Program-ming, History and Hummanities, Communication and Marketing, Scenog-raphy and Theatrical Image Make-up Making, Tailoring and Design. She has been employed to the financial sector, has cooperated with produc-tion companies as costume designer, has undertaken storefront decks for shops and has made the interior design for coffee lax places. She has also worked as a designer in fashion industry, as creative director and public relation manager. She has designed accessories, clothes and costumes for theatre, contemporary dance and custom made orders. She teaches his-tory of cloth and costume making through art routes. She designs hats and performs as a visual and conceptual artist.

Aristea GravouAΤΗΙΝΑ LOADED, 2013Installation, fabric, metal, plastic 45x175cm

Vasilis PapageorgiouBorn in Athens at 1991, Vasilis Papageorgiou is an artist producing draw-ing, sculpture and spatial works following different techniques. He lives and works in Athens and he is a member of GPO crew and Real Estate. He Is currently studying in Athens school of Fine Arts. He has participated to group exhibitions in Athens and Rotterdam and attended workshops in Athens, Thessaloniki, Hydra, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Instanbul.palmsss.blogspot.grgpocrew.comreal-project-estate-blogspot.gr

Vasilis PapageorgiouUntitled, 2013Rapidograph on paper58x57.3x5cm

Vasilis Papageorgiou Untitled, 2013Coloured Clay24x20x17cm

Christina ElefsiniotiShe was born in 1984 and raised in Athens. She is a professional illustrator based in Greece. She studied graphic design and she is self-taught in illus-tration and character design. Her influences come from mid-century pic-ture books and cartoons, halloween, monster-mash, Little Golden Books, Space/Atomic Age and from artists such as Mairy Blair, Aurelius Battaglia, Richard Scarry Tom Oreb.christinacola.artworkfolio.com

Christina ElefsiniotiFix the city, 2013Illustration printed on carton30x42cm

Stella BoroutziShe was born at Thessaloniki in 1965. She studied Graphic Design in the Faculty of Arts and Design (Technological and Education Institute of Athens - 1990). In 2011, she graduated with high merits from the school of Fine Arts of Athens. She has participated in many group exhibitions (Portas Abertas /2013, Energy Athens /2013, Dialogue #2 /2012, Athens Fringe Festival /2012 ImagINation /2011) and performances (Mediama /2011, Objet de femmes /2011, Esc_Tb /2010). She lives and works in Athens.

Stella BoroutziAttica, 2005Wood and paper13x36,5x10,5cm

Dionysia Tsekoura (Denia)Visual artist Tsekoura Dionysia (Denia) is a graduate of the preparatory and vocational school of Fine Arts at Panormos Tinos, with awards in ar-chitectural design and painting, the academic year 2004-2005. She is also a graduate of the University of Fine Arts in Athens, in June 2010. She at-tended 5 years at the laboratory of paintings studing under the supervision of Mr.T.Patraskidis, attending parallel courses of printing, mosaic creation and photography. She is a member of Visual Arts Chamber and monitor the 4-year postgraduate training program of becomming an art therapist at The Art and Psychotherary Center in Athens. She is a member of the dance - performance group of the VSA HELLAS (Very special Art Hellas / Company of artistic programs for people with special needs and the ΑΣΚΤ (University of Fine Arts). She has taken part in several group exhibitions, art events, and festivals. In September 2011 she held her first solo exhibition titled “ Psychografimata”, in Athens.oilstonehotmail.blogspot.gr

The city center is a place for many interactions and contacts on a daily basis. One way to capture or display them is to design personal journeys of people who are moving around in this city, by themselves, on the basis of a map. The concept of mapping equate the body with the place. There is a deep and genuine relationship and interaction between the body and the place. The ways in which someone realizes the environment around him, using his own body as recruitment tool which transmits stimuli, reflected on the earth. The tour of one aeria and the setting of time shape forms of sense oneself which he oc-cationally tends to adopt, depending on the social generally. Therefore, one aeria could be understood as a place where the practices of a society can be experienced - as a surface of several mappings and integrations. Simultane-ously, the body leaves its own traces inside the space in which it moves and acts at any given time, as evidence of the identity of its holder, which could be translated as art events, drawings of routes within a specific area, where they are all symbilized in the form of a map, and, partially, as elements of the original structure and composition of the subject, by becoming their own existence in space and time. Tracks that make up an imaginary place of contacts and dif-ferent stimuli which mobilise internal feelings.The cartogram is a map based on particular routes. The drawings presented at this art project are related to actual routes of people within the city, but also to imaginary routes , potentially feasible or not, which they would like to make. They arise as a consequence of action and visual material processing.

Dionysia TsekouraArtistic Cartograms, 2013Colourmarker on papervarious dimensions

Ani KrikorianAni Krikorian was born in Athens (1983). She was awarded her Diploma in Architecture from the University of Thessaly (Department of Architecture) and her Master’s Degree in Architecture with a major in Analogue & Digi-tal Production from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (Institute for Art & Architecture). Her project ‘Through the glance of Dance: Wearable Con-structs’ has been presented during academic lectures (2011-2012) at the University of Thessaly (Department of Architecture). She has co-curated various exhibitions and public performances, such as the performance ‘Waiting Room’ in the framework of the 1st Architecture Biennale of Thes-saloniki in 2012 and the exhibition ‘COPY:right’ at the Vienna Public Library. She currently resides and works in Athens, Greece.anikrikorian.blogspot.gr

Since our build environment is shaped by lines, architecture can be expressed by means of geometric relationships. The project focuses on the example of hyperbolas (symmetrical open curves) within the urban context of Athens. The interest shifts from the cityscape to the actual drawing, which eventual-ly becomes a personal interpretation of the ordinary: thus, an everyday walk through the city streets develops to a creative and imaginative “walk” through points and lines.

Ani KrikorianGeometric Fields, 2013Photograph and digital drawing35x50cm each

Ani KrikorianGeometric Fields, 2013Photograph and digital drawing35x50cm each

Ersi VarveriErsi Varveri was born in Athens, in 1984. With her work she is primarilly aiming to criticise and comment on current affairs and whatever makes the head-lines while putting forward main issues of popular culture. Her work includes large scale installations as well as installations in smaller scale incorporat- ing mixed techniques (videos, digital print-outs, photos and drawings) in order to create an alternative artistic ambience. On certain occassions she has intervened in public space with intent on re-establishing our relation-ship with the urban environment. A graduate of the School of Fine Arts of Athens, department of Painting (2011), she has also studied at the School of Fine Arts of the Kunstunivesitat in Linz Austria on an Erasmus exchange programme(2007). She has participated in projects and workshops, both individual and group exhibitions in Greece and overseas. A principal mem-ber of the BA17, a group activated on producing vj performances and various artistic projects. Alongside, she is designing her personal clothing line under the logo WHEAR.er-sie-work.blogspot.gr

Ersi VarveriPOLYS, 2013handmade jacket

ExaggerationGroup Exhibition

curated by Katerina Synodinou

ARTWALL Project Space16.10 – 16.11.2013