NATURE MORTE
Curator: Maria Marangou
Participating:
Christophoros Doulgeris, Aspassio Haritonaki,
Georgia Kotretsos, Alexandros Lambrovassilis,
Eleni Lyra, Kurt Wendlandt
Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete
Opening: Thursday, 7 April 2016, 20:00 – 22:00
Messolonghiou 32, Rethymnon
The coexistence of five Greek artists who work in their country or abroad and a historical artist from Germany made up the concept of an exhibition on Still Life in 2016, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete.
Curated by Maria Marangou, the exhibition opened on Thursday, April 7 at 20:00 on Museum’s premises at no. 32 Messolonghiou St in the old city of Rethymno.
These were works that depicted inanimate objects or pre-existing forms in two or three dimensions, using mixed media, photography, computers and digital art and in some cases emphasising illusion to the point of including the viewers themselves into the work.
Specifically, Georgia Kotretsos participated with an installation about the ephemeral image and the mental process of building and destroying images; Eleni Lyra with bodies and the drapes in the fabrics that cover them; Alexandros Lambrovassilis with the abandoned facilities of the former Athens Airoprt at Ellinikon; Aspassio Haronitaki with a mural and materials which engage the viewer; and Christophoros Doulgeris with his images of no longer operative machines.
Kurt Wendlandt (1917-1998) was a special case of a pioneering artist who experimented with transparent materials and films in the context of the 1960s movement of Lichtgrafik in Berlin as well as half-developed photos overlaid with improvisations, as described by Lefteris Oikonomou (ARTS etc. Intercultural Diologues U.G.), to whom we owe the presence of the artist’s work in Rethymnon.
The way in which Alexandros Lambrovassilis and Christophoros Doulgeris deal with the definition of what is obsolete, condemned to perish and hence in dialogue with death through a naturalistic look at the “object”; the work of Georgia Kotretsos, which is about the trace of what no longer exists; and the bodies of Eleni Lyra as a contemporary message with a “vanitas” form and content — all these could be said to converge in a debate around the depiction or the memory of the finite. Moreover, the works of Κurt Wendlandt, who fuses disparate objects together and re-proposes representation in an almost illusionary way, can be seen as part of still life in the 20th century and show an affinity with those of Aspassio Haronitaki: a clean form of 21st-century still life that uses the digital image as a medium and has its origins in the murals of Georgia O’Keeffe and the goldfish of Roy Lichtenstein.
The exhibition run through the end of May 2016, and as always there were guided tours and educational programmes.
CONTACT INFO:
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART OF CRETE
Rethymnon Municipal Enterprise (Κ.Ε.ΔΗ.Ρ.)
Messolonghiou 32, 74 100 Rethymnon
Τ: +30 28310 52530, F: +30 28310 52689
E-mail: info@cca.gr • http\\:www.cca.gr
