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JOURNEY

Cris
Gianakos
JOURNEY
June 12 - October 3, 2021
Poros
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CITRONNE Gallery opens its exhibition program for summer 2021 with the solo exhibition JOURNEY by Cris Giannakos. The exhibition is to open on Saturday, June 12 and will run through September 11. A renowned, groundbreaking artist, Cris Giannakos is a member of the Greek Diaspora who lives and works in New York.

The CITRONNE Gallery exhibition features landmark paintings from 1980 – 2020, works 'of the pandemic' as a response to covid, and two new works of 2021—two installations created specifically for this show.

"In this exhibition at Citronne, Tatiana and I were able to pull together 4 decades of my art practice from 1981 to 2020 drawings done in reaction to Covid and 2 new 2021 floor structures to be fabricated and installed in the gallery. We titled the show “JOURNEY", denoting a passage through different works done in different mediums at different times. When you view them, no matter in which medium or time, you always feel evidence of the hand and my concerns for architecture, ancient Greek sites and engineering. But my work consistently circles around ramps, large structures in an environment, a conceptual idea marrying a concrete form to a specific site." (Cris Gianakos)

The basis of the work of Cris Giannakos is a research field around a geometrical axis. He crosses space with the imaginary extensions created by a geometric script in the environment—an approach he adopted from the outset in his artistic career. He also crosses time, as he is drawn to the character of ancient art, to classical architecture and above all to the ratio, i.e. its relation to geometry.

In the early ’90s he began to alter photographs of ancient artworks as well as those of archaeological sites. His works often constitute a rereading of ancient sites and monuments, always on the basis of key geometric shapes-symbols. He overlays the photos of archaeological sites, historic places and statues with geometric shapes which, to him, reflect the fundamental spirit of civilization in its various manifestations.

Yet in his recent "Pandemic Series” and “Dystopia Series”, geometry and the ratio, the structured world, is reversed. The site within space does not vanish but gets more difficult as it loses its distinctive elements. Blue or red, a dystopia, an uneasiness dominates as the symptom of a major reversal. These are works stemming from the subconscious and characterized by a gestural visual script—an explainable deviation from the artist's usual fare. The impression generated by these works is one of disorder, in full dissonance with the familiar and soothing order. It reflects a world that has suddenly lost its pace, its motion, its proportion and cohesion.

The exhibition JOURNEY is the third solo show to be organized by Citronne for Cris Giannakos. It comes after another solo event at the gallery in 2008 and an exhibition at the Archaeological Museum of Poros in 2013.

Artworks

Marking Time

Stephen
Antonakos
Marking Time
April 17 - September 25, 2021
Athens
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Stephen Antonakos (Greece, 1926 — New York, 2013) returns to Citronne Gallery with the solo exhibition “MARKING TIME” — a selected narrative through six directions of work, from the Project Drawings (1965-1973) through two iconic gold-leafed Neon Panels from 2009. The years between are “marked” by the suite of 4 silkscreened, torn, and collaged “Tears” of 1979; 3 crucial colored-pencil on French vellum drawings from 1980; 3 post-“ALPHAVITOS” white wood Reliefs from 1986; and several of the climactic Spring Series drawings from 2006 — each covered in “hatching” strokes in one color and then variously folded, cut, cut-out, or layered.

From their beginnings in the 1950s and throughout the decades, Antonakos's abstract geometries exhibited a natural sense of scale and a mastery of relating forms to each other and to their sites.

"Ι believe there is human meaning in basic abstract forms,
in their specific proportions and placements.
My work is real things in real spaces. Νο illusions."

From childhood he drew constantly and inventively, and drawing remained a major practice. With an innate rigor and led by a kinetic sense of readiness, he activated the given space. "The hand and the mind are one," he said. From the early 1950s, he worked in three dimensions as well. He is best known for his work with neon, begun toward the end of that decade with geometric shapes. Νο words, no images. Uniquely, he embraced and explored neon for its own qualities - intense color, flexibility, capacity for great scale, responsiveness to auxiliary light, and - crucially - indivisibility from space. These qualities are exemplified in the Direct Neons, Neon Panels, Neon Walls, Rooms, and Canvases; and in the over 50 architecturally-scaled Public Works that followed. Through the years, he composed collages and Travel Collages, conceived and realized the Packages, compiled ALPHAVITOS and other Artist's Books, and more. On each of his roads, he travelled long distances, usually for decades.

For Antonakos, the participation of the viewer was central. He hoped always to reach the inner person and considered that it was the experience of the viewer that completed a work. Α deeply religious man, his non-referential innovations with geometry, light, and space evolved in the late 1980s toward a sense of the spiritual. Meditation Spaces and Chapels became major themes. He made a series of Neon Panels with gold-leaf surfaces dedicated to Orthodox saints, with such titles as Resurrection. With elemental trust in the art's formal and material capacities, he worked from an awareness of the world toward a possible state of being in the presence of the art suggested by the Greek word isychίa - quiet, but alert - with senses open.

"I am a realist.
Ι am quite aware of today's and yesterday's injustices and losses. The goal is to live with energy, to fight the tragedies."

Artworks

“Visibilium et invisibilium”

Alekos
Kyrarinis
Visibilium et invisibilium
October 22, 2020 - February 28, 2021
Athens
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Alekos Kyrarinis’ s latest works mark the end of a two-year period of prolific artistic production. 28 large and small-scale works of egg tempera on wood, 10 mixed technique drawings on paper, 5 sculptures in the round or overpainted Tinian marble reliefs (the island of Tinos is the artist’s birthplace) and 1 video clip for an excerpt of the composition by Giorgos Koumendakis, The Pedal Tone of a Child, which is the outcome of the cooperation and mutual respect between the composer and the painter. Through the works of this exhibition, works that encapsulate all the characteristics of his artistry, Kyrarinis complements, extends and further refines a career in painting of almost twenty years.

Artworks

Ars Longa

Ars Longa
Group exhibition
October 2 - October 17, 2020
Athens

Yiannis Adamakos
Cris Gianakos
Makis Theofylaktopoulos
Alekos Kyrarinis
George Lappas
Nikos Markou

Citronne gallery Athens presents a selection of artworks by six artists as a preview of its participation in the forthcoming online "Art Athina, 2020".
"Ars Longa", Citronne gallery’s starting point in terms of subject, exhibits and brings together contemporary artworks - painting, sculpture, construction, photography.

The art media used are diverse, the artists come from different eras and backgrounds; however, they form a palimpsest of ideas and creativity which hovers above time and space. What we are trying to demonstrate, to prove, is that Art transcends human limits, and the finite human life.

In our days, humanity is undergoing a great, unforeseen ordeal which is dominated by the fear of the unknown. In parallel or even against this distress, Art raises protective and defensive walls, breaks free from the neurotic rationalism of our days and guarantees the value of continuity, the immortality of Creation.
Yiannis Adamakos and his abstractions, Cris Gianakos of the Diaspora , the transcendental Makis Theofylaktopoulos, Alekos Kyrarinis and his Byzantine obsessions, the post mortem multifaceted George Lappas and photographer Nikos Markou give life to this creative spirit.

Ars Longa is a wakeup call against the current nightmare. Between bloom and wear, between the brevity of life - vita brevis and the longevity of memory, Art had and still has the power to go beyond sensible limits and to withstand time, surpassing human dimension, human state and human boundaries.

Yiannis Adamakos seeks to exhaust the boundaries between the sensible world and the subjective-subconscious reception of reality. He dredges up and explains the traces of memory. He demonstrates that the limits between present and past are forged in Memory. Similarly, the limits between light and darkness, noise and silence, dream and experience, nature and fantasy fuse into colour.

Cris Gianakos, a well known visual artist of the Greek Diaspora. He is interested in architecture, ancient civilisations and human behaviour. He is fascinated by geometrical forms and classical proportions as well as their cultural and spiritual aspect. With the dynamic composition of clear geometric levels, such as the Cross and the Diagonal, it hints at the supremacy of pure emotions.

Makis Theofylaktopoulos, representing Greek expressionism, has created a soaring universe of painting excellence and existential depth, at the centre of which lies the human or human-like form. Given that he constantly reinvents his technique anew, he goes from representation to an almost autobiographical abstraction as it seeks "artistic emission", that is, the power of painting to pulsate irrationally within its viewer With a constantly reinvented technique, he goes from the representation of the form to an almost autobiographical abstraction, in search of the "artistic emission" - that is, the possibility of the painting pulsating horses inside its viewer. The image of a solitary, urban person in such a difficult world, concerns human existence per se.

Alekos Kyrarinis, with a varied visual signature, with personal meanings and collective memories, he continues with his complex, strictly personal quest. Kyrarinis’ painting is a fascinating amalgam of influences that have been so utterly assimilated that they have become difficult to distinguish - from Byzantine semantics to Islamic calligraphy and contemporary visual artists, from Greece or abroad. Space in his works is overwhelmed by varied decorative motifs which stem from a very large time frame ranging from the late antiquity to the byzantine and post-byzantine era moving on to popular marble sculpture and woodcarving. All motifs play an instrumental part in the composition because their use is the result of Kyrarinis’ profound awareness of their symbolism and visual importance.

George Lappas rejects limitations; he is indifferent to "rationality." He is characterised by and expresses the eternal desire of man to exceed limits. His world is composed of metal, plastic fabric, electric lamps. These unexpected materials create a sense of paradox, of the uncanny, which evokes subconscious oneiric connections, and hard-to-apprehend associations. After all, Lappas defies limitations, he is indifferent to rationality. The physical body is abolished; thought, memory and narration work exclusively in their internal rationale. His works are first and foremost a study of the relationship between body and space and time, a reflection on the relations of the past and the future of sculpture, the structural parameters of plastic arts and architecture in relation to location, but also a dive into aspects of the human soul.

Nikos Markou provides a photographic definition of an inner world, an Inner Space. From selected landscapes he shifts to an inner reality. Moreover, from natural rendering he moves to technical mutative treatment. The end result leads the viewer to a “fabricated” reality. These photographs are no longer photographs of landscapes or people, but interior landscapes- namely a transcendent reconstruction whose starting point is assimilated through the photographer’s decisive and subjective interpretation.

Artworks

TOPOS

Nikos
Markou
TOPOS
June 27 - September 13, 2020
Poros
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Photographer Nikos Markou selects spaces which he defines as a personal "Topos" — a private point of reference.

His Topos of urban or other decontextualized landscapes leads towards a clear or unclear horizon which renders them deliberately finite. The human presence is either nonexistent or merely hinted at—but its impact is all too visible: pollution, environmental destruction, deterioration of nature, distortion of the physiognomy of the place. In the images of Athens, degradation has evolved into an everyday experience, but similar elements can be discerned out of town, such as the half-sunken ship that dissects the horizon and the sea in Eleusis. Even the lotus flowers in the Corinthian landscape hint at the loss of memory more than at blossoming and bounty.

Here the photographer aims to generate a semi-objective impression as he invisibly intertwines natural and artificial elements. His “topos” is constructed via the framing of his chosen subject.

Artworks

GREECE AND WRITING CODES

Constantin
Xenakis
GREECE AND WRITING CODES
June 27 - October 4, 2020
Poros
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The multifaceted visual idiom of Constantin Xenakis is inspired by signs and symbols that span the spectrum from the ancient worlds of Egypt and Greece to contemporary reality: urban structures, computer systems, the chaotic internet. He charts and codifies, combines elements from past and present, documents and denounces the impasses of communication, the lack of understanding, the contemporary world's failure to connect.

His works unify time and space, since questions like these have always engendered a universal preoccupation. They unfold along an axis of repetition / juxtaposition / layering, a codified image of contemporary culture. In this way the artwork becomes a means of ideological critique to the current sociopolitical system.

The emblematic work in the series at the Museum is a map of Greece, a chart of the sea—"la mer grecque". As always in the mapping works of Xenakis, the objective documentation is chaotically mingled with symbols-references that are personal or cultural in a broader sense. The charted Aegean Sea is presented as a "mosaic of shipwrecks"; a Greek sea that acts as both an intercultural cradle and a hub of Greek tragedy. It must be remembered that the Aegean is the predominant marine point of reference throughout Greek history, political and cultural alike, and hence a timeless element of Greek and Greek-born identity.

Artworks

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