Zoumboulakis Galleries present the limited edition multiples of Robert Rauschenberg.
Robert Rauschenberg, an iconic American artist of the 20th century, collaborated with many pioneering artists, scientists, dancers, composers and activists and he created multifaceted and polymorphous artworks that praised the everyday and the ephemeral.
The multiples exhibited in Zoumboulakis Galleries, are part of the collections Bones & Unions, Horsefeathers Thirteen Series and Hoarfrost Editions created by the artists at the Gemini G.E.L.lab during the 70s. These works have been exhibited at Zoumboulakis Galleries for the first time in 1977.
Rauschenberg’s belief in the power of art to set in motion positive social change was the central drive of his involvement in many international art happenings and shows. During the 70’ and 80’, the artist worked with makers of handmade paper in France, India and China. In his travels he accumulated a vast amount of varied materials aiming to use them in his work. As a result his work embodied a deep understanding of different cultures and a unique mix of images and materials. A characteristic sample of this process is the Bones & Unions series, made by a mixture of mud and paper pulp along with other spices that engulf the artworks in a distinct curry aroma.
The importance of the original multiple editions has been promoted by Zoumboulakis Galleries through its collaboration with Gemini G.E.L.
The artwork Domicile, (1996) is part of the U.S. Embassy of Athens collection and will be presented for the first time.
Exhibition’s texts
Parallel exhibition
NIKOS ALEXIOU
Zoumboulakis Galleries presents the work of Nikos Alexiou from the series Kalamenia.
In 1986, Alexiou started ‘weaving’ with reeds ‘immaterial’ constructions. No door or wall is ‘closed’, and in this way ‘hovering spaces’ are formed. These empty frameworks, which do not represent ruins, leave us wondering about the method that we can use in order to identify with this spectacle of transparency and void.
The works of the series are representative of Alexiou’s experimentation with plain architectural forms. By positioning anonymous architecture and the Mediterranean landscape as his central inspiration, and specifically that of Crete, his birthplace, Alexiou developed a fertile dialogue with the work of iconic Greek and international creators (Aris Konstadinidis, Zisimos Lorentzatos, Nikos Kessanlis, Dimitris Dimitriadis, Samuel Beckett, Stanley Kubrick, Bernard Rudofsky, Vasily Grigorovich Barsky). Alexiou’s work is the result of his traveling, visiting, and roaming – metaphorically as well as literally – on the footsteps of these creators.
Nikos Alexiou (b. 1960, Rethimno, Crete – 2011, Athens) is one of Greece’ most prominent artists. His unique work is among the most poised and recognizable contemporary Greek art has to show. While still in life, he managed to redraw and re-construct galaxies, rocks, stone wells, rainbows, ‘solar rooms’, ‘mythological cities’, labyrinths, towers and crosses, kiosks, temple floors, gates, drapes, arrows, weaved grids and fancyworks; artworks made of reeds and paper, threads and textiles, dirt and clay, iron and wax, as well as works utilizing mechanical reproduced media (photography, video, digital prints).
