Snehta’s greek based residency program concluded with the opening of a final group exhibition. Completing their new body of work Greek based artists Alexandros Kaklamanos, Dimitra Kousteridou and Valia Papastamou took part in a group exhibition on both of Snehta’s sites.
The lockdown imposed new ways that inspire creative and artistic collaborations. Stemming from the potentials and not from restrictions Snehta reworked its traditional residency structure and since March 2020 has inaugurated Median art residency; a new programme which supports aspiring contemporary Greek-based artists. The emergence of new demands in the creative sector due to the pandemic altered the programme’s original studio component. The residents continued exchanging ideas through online calls which allowed them to compose some key ideas and the conceptual approach they followed towards their final show. Therefore the artists treated the traditional workspace and studio as a totality by comparing it to a living organism where mostly formal manifestations of their work will be exhibited in the spaces foreground and interior space. The artists – through their works will communicate ideas also via non-traditional mediums such as sound and vibration; and use the spaces as a pulsating surface.
In more detail, Alexandros Kaklamanos developed an installation composed of a ready-made pendulum-like sculpture. The work purposely bore a strong resemblance to ancient Greek ceramic vessels whilst it acquired an industrial and rather architectonic figuration through the use of the aluminium chimney and the stencil work meticulously sprayed on its surface. For the artist, the work represents ‘‘a zero point ’’, a fragment of his epoch that graphically renders all major stations of his artistic accomplishments. His artistic process is formed on a linear even genealogical basis (each work represents an improved genealogy of its ‘predecessor’) whilst turning the question internally as to what could be renegotiated at times of extreme change and existential predispositions.
Dimitra Kousteridou’s compositions cannot be defined by the medium she is using. Her workspace transforms into a hybrid between a lab and a music studio where everything turns into an experiment. Painting with acrylics, using clay and performing with her own body are agents through which she composes sounds and vibrations through electrical circuits; quoting the artist: “Air, electricity and sound are becoming carriers of meaning. The vibrating sonic volumes search their way between the inside and the outside space, between materials, between textures and between bodies; the complex paths and cracks between us.”
Valia Papastamou claims that “There is so much blue on the net”. Her piece was made by conversations that took place in the digital environment, which appeared as words that navigate in the digital blue or as snapshots of digital weather. Extracting vowels and consonants from conversations, she transferred her linguistic research into physical form using sculpting as her medium. Nonetheless, the phonetic articulation of vowels and consonants was transcribed in two sound pieces, which were played together in order to create a new synchronised dialogue. Searching for their points of encounter, her installation and sound piece were forming a net of conversations away from this blue that keeps us apart.
OPENING: 17:00 Monday 22nd of March, 2021
ON VIEW: 22nd March – 4th April 2021
LOCATION: Vitrine spaces at Snehta, I. Drosopoulou 47, Kypseli, Athens & Snehta Satellite, Kefallinias 39, Kypseli, Athens
