Panos Charalambous

AMVRAKIA.MIA

March 21 - May 11, 2024

Athens

19 Patriarchou Ioakim
4th floor
10675 Athens
Greece

(+30) 210 7235 226

Opening Hours
Tue, Thu, Fr: 11.00-20.00
Wed, Sat: 11.00-16.00

Panos Charalambous (1952-) lives and works in Athens. His oeuvre include performances, happenings and installations that often encompass sound, video, photography, found objects, archival material, or mixed-media works. His work evokes the notion of time and loss. It addresses locality and also scavenges the deeper kinships among different cultures in a non-linear manner. Panos Charalambous redefines the importance of the European South as a periphery. With a social-anthropological approach he creates a dynamic between past and present ways of being. Panos Charalambous has participated in exhibitions internationally, including: 58th Venice Biennale (at the Greek National pavilion), Venice, Italy (2019); documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); White House Biennial, Varna (2016); eidos, Besançon (2014); Break-Through, Madrid (2004); Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen (1996); and Kunst-Europa, Berlin (1991). Solo shows in Greece include: AMVRAKIA MIA (2024) Epigrafomena, Poros (2022), Aquis Submersus (2014-15); Tobacco Area 1986-2011 (2011); Voice-O-Graph (2006-07); Phonopolis (2003-04); Psychagogia II (2001); 1496-2000 / como humo se va (1999-2000); and Psychagogia I: Recreation (1997). In 2015, he was awarded by the Association of Art Critics – AICA HELLAS for the exhibition AQUIS SUBMERSUS. He was elected professor emeritus and served as Rector of the Athens School of Fine Arts during the period 2014-2019.

On Thursday, 21 March 2024, CITRONNE Gallery – Athens is pleased to present Panos Charalambous' solo exhibition AMVRAKIA.MIA.

It is an installation consisted of sound sculptures, wall-mounted works and videos. Motifs that permeate the entirety of an oeuvre that is based on research and personal experiences complement one another and generate new, contemporary connections. The outcome is a «performative landscape», a «tableau vivant», an ensemble of material and immaterial documents: sounds, objects, memorabilia, impressions, mnemonic elements and archival material that allude to a past, productive agrarian world and its culture.
 
The in situ installation AMVRAKIA.MIA, especially made for CITRONNE Gallery, spreads throughout its premises and creates a juxtaposition between the architecture of an urban apartment and the extensive rural, open-air space. It weaves connections that instead of returning to the past render it relevant to the present. 
 
As in the works that Panos Charalambous presented at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019, Greek Pavillion) and documenta 14 (Athens, Kassel, 2017), he draws ideas and inspiration from his place of origin, the region of Xiromero in Akarnania. He projects the distinct character of the periphery as a prominent constituent of an artistic «strategy». Adopting an anthropological-ethnographic and experimental approach, he transcribes motifs of a local, folk culture and explores its surviving influence on the present day.
 
The exhibition is supplemented by the edition AMVRAKIA.MIA (CITRONΝΕ Gallery and Kastaniotis Editions). Texts in English and Greek by: Panos Charalambous, Panos Panopoulos, Tatiana Spinari-Pollalis, Thomas Symeonidis and Marina Fokidis.