Zoumboulakis Galleries present the group exhibition anafora periptoseon (Report on Cases) curated by Christoforos Marinos.
The group exhibition “anafora periptoseon” results from a dialogic association between texts and images. An out-of-print book, the prose collection Anafora periptoseon by Greek writer and journalist Alexandros Schinas (1924-2012), served as the starting point for a temporary cohabitation of artworks the curator encountered in the artists’ studios, houses and archives.
“Anafora periptoseon” is a show that functions primarily as an experiment, both as a summary and a trial; the dialogue between the texts and the artworks is fictional and exists only in the curator’s mind. Springing from various spaces and timeframes, the exhibited works relate to each other via a grid of memories, conversations, dispositions, underground relations and incidents. In contemporary art we often see artists producing works directly inspired by stories and novels; in this case, though, the opposite happened: Schinas’s texts are the ones which “approach” the artworks.
The position of the works in the gallery space is determined by the contents of the book as well as through criteria related to the degrees of kinship, real or hypothetical, between the participating artists. In such a way, each of the 18 texts of the supplemented edition of “anafora periptoseon” published by Estia Bookshop in 1989 (the texts were divided by the writer in three chapters: “Cases of constructions of worlds”, Cases of Ego’s involvement into the Other”, “Cases from the minimum to nothing”), corresponds to one or more works by the following artists: Alexis Akrithakis, Nikos Alexiou, Manolis Baboussis, Margarita Bofiliou, Savvas Christodoulides, Lydia Dambassina, Valerios Caloutsis, Michalis Katzourakis, Yorgos Lazongas, Andreas Liberatos, Panayiotis Loukas / Malvina Panagiotidi, Despina Meimaroglou, Aliki Palaska, Rallou Panagiotou, Rena Papaspyrou, Aspa Stasinopoulou, Yiannis Theodoropoulos, Nikos Tranos, Christos Tzivelos, Jannis Varelas, Lazaros Zikos, Eleni Zouni.
Just like Schinas’s book, the works presented in “anafora periptoseon” are relatively unknown to the wider public. Most of them have never been shown in Athens; in this way the curator reports on cases of works that escape our attention and deserve attentive study. This need for a revisionist-penetrating glimpse, which generates recollection and surprise, is the essence of the curatorial proposal.
