About the artist
About the exhibition
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.