Virvili Square
18020 Poros Island
Greece
Telephone
(+30) 697 9989 684
Opening Hours
Daily: 11.00-13.00 & 19.00-23.00
About the artists
Alexandra Athanassiades was born in 1961 in Athens, Greece where she still lives and works. Her higher education began in Switzerland, at Lugano’s Franklin College. In 1982 she graduated with distinction from Oxford University’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at St. Anne’s College and was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Printmaking. In 1984 she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from New York’s Columbia University. Since 1984 she has shown her work in several solo and group exhibitions in Athens, Delphi, Ancient Messene, Poros, Larissa, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Patmos, Ioannina, Paris, New York Connecticut, Brussels, London and Monte Carlo where in 1995 she won the Princess Grace Foundation Award.
Lydia Delikoura (b.1996, Athens) is a multidisciplinary artist working across drawing and installation. She is a graduate student of UAL, Camberwell College of Arts and Goldsmiths University of London. She has undertaken an artist residency at High-House Working Residency, Antony Gormley Estate, Norfolk UK (2018). She was commissioned by high fashion brand PAOLITA to create the annual installation in Notting Hill, London, as part of the artist residency (2021). In June 2022, she participated in the site-specific group exhibition, Ismaïl project, with the Ministry of Culture, Tinos, Greece (2022). Recent group shows include Iridescence, Alkinois, Athens, Greece (2022) and Looking with the Eyes of Love, The Breeder gallery, Athens, Greece (2023). In 2014 she received the Tio Ilar award for most promising young Greek artist, exhibiting in a group show including young artists from Turkey and Greece. She is currently studying Marble Sculpture at the School of Fine Arts, Panormos, Tinos.
Iasonas Kampanis was born in 1985 in Athens (Greece), where he currently lives and works. He studied silversmithing and jewelry design at the Mokume Institute in Thessaloniki. Since 2007, he is working with painting, photography, digital media and scenographic works. His work and research focus on our sacred kinship with the natural world and animistic origins in the Mediterranean culture, addressing anthropocentric views which have distanced us from our sense of universality. In 2020 he received the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Award by ARTWORKS. He has collaborated and exhibited, among others, with the Museum of Cycladic Art, Breeder Gallery (Athens), Rebecca Camhi Gallery (Athens), curator Marina Fokidis, the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival and MoMus, KEIV (Athens), Victoria Square Project (Athens), kunsthallekleinbasel (Basel), architect Pulcheria Tzova, Onassis Stegi (Athens), director Maria Gaitanidi, actress Stacy Martin, Islington Arts Factory (London), Bishopsgate Institute (London), Lubomirov/Angus Hughes Gallery (London), Ligne Roset (London), Design Exchange magazine, London Print Studio (London), Christie’s Head of Prints & Multiples Murray Macaulay, Teloglion Art Foundation (Thessaloniki), performer Irina Osterberg, and zoologist Desmond Morris. He has also been engaged in printmaking, Byzantine murals, film and theater productions, and educational programs.
Katerina Katsifaraki studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and at D.A.I in the Netherlands. She has participated in exhibitions, residencies and performances in Greece and abroad. She designed and implemented in situ installations in various venues, such as Museum of Popular Art and Tradition Angeliki Hatzimichali, AnnexM/ garden at the Megaron Athens Concert Hall, The First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale (Crete), Museum Benaki/’NEMA’ (Athens), Video Art Miden (Greece, Portugal), Exomvourgo (Tinos), Rencontres Internationales Al Maken d’Art Actuel (Tunisia), Libby Sacer Foundation (Athens), Museum of Yugoslavia– Museum of 25th May (Serbia), Studentski Kulturni Center (SKC) (Serbia), Outdoors Touring Balkan Project (Serbia), Villa Weiner (Germany), Nomadic/Topos/Athena, Akademietheater van Utrecht (Netherlands), Středočeské Muzeum Rostoky (Czech Republic), El Estudio Ammeba (Athens) among others. She has worked as a teacher in the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Crete, in the College of Athens (HAEF) and in public schools.
Alekos Kyrarinis was born in 1976 in Athens and raised on the island of Tinos, the place of his origin. He worked with his father, Yiannis Kyrarinis, a sculptor in marble, from the age of eleven until 1997, when he was admitted to the Athens School of Fine Arts. At the School he studied at the studio of Jannis Psychopedis and graduated in 2003. He has illustrated the following books: Calendar of Group ALPHA 2003, Verifying the Night (Dimitris Angelis, Neos Astrolavos / Efthyni, Athens 2011), Encima del subsuelo /Above the subsoil (Kostas Vrachnos, limited edition, Athens 2012), issues 1,2,3 of the magazine “Nea Efthyne”, Drippings from the tiles (Monk Antonios Romaios, En Plo editions, Athens 2015), issue 1 of the magazine “Anthivola”. He collaborates with the magazine “Frear” and with the cultural space “Baumstrasse”. He has published an essay book about painting entitled “Nefeli’s questions”, Mikros Astrolavos /Efthyni, Athens 2011.His work has been shown in 16 solo exhibitions in Greece, Spain and Belgium. He has participated in several group exhibitions in Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Poland, Romania, France and Spain.
Petros Moris (b. 1986, Lamia) is an artist based in Athens. He has received a BFA from the Athens School of Fine Arts and an MFA from the Goldsmiths University of London. He has been nominated for the DESTE Prize 2015 and has been awarded the ARTWORKS 2018 Fellowship, the Onassis Foundation Scholarship (2017-19), and the Delfina Foundation Residency (2020 and 2022). He has presented solo exhibitions in galleries and art spaces including Radio Athènes (Athens), Galeria Duarte Sequiera (Braga), Project Native Informant (London), Point Centre for Contemporary Art (Nicosia), Duve Berlin (Berlin), and the Cyprus Embassy (Athens). He has participated in international group exhibitions including A Rave Down Below (Eleusis European Capital of Culture 2023), the Athens Biennale (FOKAS, Athens 2021), The Last Museum (KW, Berlin 2021), the Singapore Biennale (National Gallery, Singapore 2019), the 4rth New Museum Triennial (New Museum, New York 2018) and The Equilibrists (DESTE X New Museum at the Benaki Museum, Athens 2016). He has curated exhibitions and events at the Chisenhale Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery, Circuits and Currents, and the Athens Biennale. He has been part of the art collective KERNEL, the online curatorial collaboration SIM, the curatorial project Radical Reading and runs the publication project AM Reading Club.
Nikos Podias was born in 1974 in Thessaloniki. In 1999 he graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he studied painting with Dimitris Mytaras and set design with George Ziakas. In 2001, as a scholarship holder of the Onassis Foundation, he completed his postgraduate studies in stage design at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and the Hochchule fur Gestaltung und Kunst in Zurich. His works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. He lives and works in Athens.
Nana Sahini holds a Master’s degree (Master), Postgraduate Diploma (PgDip) in Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London and a BA degree (BA) from the School of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In her works – sculpture, installation, drawing, photography and performance – she perceives “body-form-existence-sexuality-identity-ethics-politics-politics-existence” as one and inseparable whole. She has presented her work in exhibitions in Greece, Cyprus and the UK. USA, Austria, Germany, Germany, Lebanon etc: Lakryphagi, Tavros Locus Athens, Athens (solo – performance and sculptural installation 2023), Contemporary Womanhood, Alex Mylonas Museum, Athens MOMus (2023), Inside the Skylight, Korai, Nicosia, Cyprus (solo 2022), Mr Robinson Crusoe stayed home, Benaki Museum, Athens (2021), Lypiu, A-DASH, Athens, Construction Site of Excpetional Feelings, The Breeder Gallery. Athens (2020), Caritas Romana, Thessaloniki International Film Festival (2018), Common Places of Worship at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2017, new production by Stavros Niarchos Foundation), Hypnos Project, Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens (produced by Onassis Cultural Centre, 2016), Aeropagus Konigin, Parallel Vienna, Austria (2015), The body and other short stories – Performance in the collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, K. S.T.TH, Thessaloniki (2015), Reverb: New Art from Greece at SMFA, Boston, USA (2014), State Museum of Contemporary Art / Biennale 4 of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki (2014) , All my pretty ones, aantonopoulouart gallery, Athens (solo 2014), Now logic must take care of itself, Remap4, Athens (solo 2013), Kunsthalle Athena (2012), On books and translation, 98weeks, Beirut (2011) etc. Her works are in the DD Collection-Dimitris Daskalopoulos, MOMus Thessaloniki, FKP Collection and private collections. She is a founding member of the live-art group “KangarooCourt” and has collaborated with visual artists, directors (Nova Melancholia / Onassis Cultural Centre) and curators for collaborative projects.
About the exhibition
CITRONNE Gallery's summer season opens in Poros with “Myth-histories”, an exhibition by nine visual artists, Alexandra Athanassiades, Lydia Delikoura, Iasonas Kampanis, Katerina Katsifaraki, Alekos Kyrarinis, Tassos Mantzavinos, Petros Moris, Nikos Podias and Nana Sachini. The artists delve into the layers of History and the decisive power of the Myth in the context of “Mare Nostrum”, the Mediterranean Sea. Fragments of History meet primary myths and age-old myths are identified in historical events. Though their works, the artists narrate their personal selective approach to this topic.
Alexandra Athanassiades presents works from the series “Memories” and “Fragments”, which refer to fragmented bits of personal and collective memory or random objects-finds. Her portrayal of visible and invisible realities is imbued with intensely reflected emotions. The starting point is the tangible manifestations of classical Antiquity and their place in the modern world, but also pieces or even bits from modern vessels and objects of everyday life, in which intentional inscriptions can be distinguished ad hoc. She portrays and recreates a present which, however, also comprises random materials of Memory, that is, of the past. She transforms perishable materials in order for them to acquire a new quality.
Lydia Delikoura uses nature as her starting point and tries to transmute it into a visual idiom. Thus, she establishes an intermediate reality between image and symbol in an effort to provide an artistic “interpretation” of the longstanding new. By association, primordial myths arise, such as those about the hedgehog, the Archilochus’ reference, and –the more recent– Schopenhauer's allegory. We recognize byzantine patterns in the “Braid”, namely the chain with the austere geometric design reminiscent of traditional knitting. Myth and History are expressed as interdependent and alternating rings.
Iasonas Kampanis embarks on a long journey in the ancient Mediterranean civilization. The heads of the god Pan remind us of the symbolism of the Myth: everything, namely nature in its completeness, of which Man is also a part. Then is the leopard, as an exotic complex animal according to the Romans and as genius loci, a local protective spirit of a place. Finally, the work “and here shall your proud waves be stayed” leads the viewers to the biblical excerpt from Job and, at the same time, to the inexhaustible power of water, which will halt in order to create land as an integral element of nature. The depicted tree is also a reference to this relationship.
In the exhibited works by Katerina Katsifaraki the prickly pear is the essential material. This plant, originating from the Orient, is associated with archetypal myths that are present in the memory of the peoples of the region. Also, in the closing verses of his poem Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot makes a reference to the biblical prickly pear as a symbol of decadence. The artist investigates the space between idea and reality, between inspiration and creation. The “Prickly Pear Tissues” –altered by time– have turned into a faint web, a spider's web; an obvious and direct reference to the myth of the same name. This material is meticulously treated by the artist who has added gold leaves to it.
Alekos Kyrarinis participates in the exhibition with the sculptural work “Cycladic”. The name is an obvious reference to the long cultural history of the Cyclades, which imbues all aspects of Language and Art. Creation is placed in the present time, but the references come from the far reaches of History and tradition. We recognise the artist’s familiar motifs stemming from early Christian and Byzantine art. This work also reminds us of the oblations and votive offerings placed on miracle icons, the ex voto, the makeshift prayer books; at the same time, the artist's love for new currents and modernism is more than noticeable. Thus, the work suggests a distant folk starting point; however, it is permeated by an absolutely contemporary perception of artistic reality, among others.
Tassos Mantzavinos participates in the exhibition with the work “House of Ideas and Arts”. It is the dwelling of the artist’s psyche, the subconscious of life. Symbols, memories, and references from various stages of the artist's personal trajectory are fused with folk tradition and its motifs. These archetypes –of pronouncedly Hellenic qualities– revolve around memory, experience and dreams within the context of the sea, the great archetype of Hellenism.
In his sculptural composition, Petros Moris presents the “Sphinx” as a loan from the Antiquity. It has been suggested that the word Sphinx is a Greek corruption of the Egyptian word “shesepankh”, which meant “Living Image” and it describes a mysterious female creature of Greek mythology who challenged those who encountered her to answer a riddle; those who solved it were spared of their lives, those who failed were killed. Given that the riddle concerns the very existence of man, it was directly linked with psychoanalysis. At the same time, in his work “Arrow”, the artist uses marble in which he integrates traces and colours reminiscent of graffiti.
Nikos Podias presents an armour. It is a “Cuirass” made of paper, a contradictio in terminis, a mutually cancelling composition. The –by default– robust cuirass becomes fragile because it is made of paper; therefore, the armour is also illusory. In another work he portrays a snakeskin on which the scales are visible and create remarkable formations bestowing brightness and colour to it. The armour stands above the ground and covers the upper part of the body; its purpose is to protect life and suspend death. The snake, the serpent, the eternal source of evil; it crawls the earth and hides in the darkness. At the same time, the serpent illustrates and symbolizes a whole universe of thought, philosophy and science: from Medicine to Theosophy (God-Serpent), as described by Kazantzakis. These works carry the weight of the past into the functional necessity of the present as age-old symbols-fragments.
In her works, Nana Sachini abides by the rule of the indivisibility between body, form, existence, politics, and poetry. Her starting point is the agate, a semi-precious stone associated with various traditions and beliefs. It is a symbol of fertility and good health, stability and composure. One of its formations resembles the “apotropaic eye” that averts evil, a particularly widespread image in the Orient. In this rock, the artist sees a connection between the human body and the earth. Once again, myths and traditional beliefs engage in a dialogue with current realities.
These nine artists express locality as an echo of History and a figment of Myth.