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From January 27 until February 28, sculptor Theodoros Papagianis, an Emeritus Professor of the Athens School of Fine Arts, will be exhibiting at the Ikastikos Kiklos Sianti some of his works created during the last five years. Curator of the exhibition is Manos Stefanidis, an Emeritus Professor of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The artist will be presenting works based on the ceramic art. More precisely, as the curator of the exhibition remarks:
”During the last few years, besides his monumental sculptures and his gigantic xoana, Theodoros Papagianis has been working with great dedication and passion on a series of small sculptures made out of terracotta. The overall impression is that of a game between adults who have forsaken their youth or that of crystallized images springing out of the deepest corners of the unconscious, the purest form of collective memory. The holiest form of naïveté. In this case, Papagianis’ conscious primitivism becomes the stuff of miracles as he molds earth, color and light into supplicants, mothers of Kouroi, idols in the shape of Φ or Ψ, ancient, yet surviving circular dances, fierce heroes of an ongoing struggle which begun in 1921, human types or pastoral scenes derived from his childhood memories of the village Elliniko near Ioannina, funerals, marriages, joys, as well as the bitterness of parting.
Insisting on this minimalistic form, Papagianis managed to compose a kind of sculptural performance, a form of ceramic ‘puppet show’. By grouping together hundreds of sculptures, he creates progressions, exits, litanies, parades, presented in a very imaginative and deeply evocative way. Reaching a point where the small becomes great. ‘Performances’ presented with great success in a number of important museums, an artistic intervention honoring the 200 years of our National Liberation, as well as the constant drama of our national history. Because the drama of nature or time is a projection of the drama of existence. When the senses take the form of aesthetics and nature takes the form of metaphysics.
A similar kind of ‘performance’ is presented through small sculptures, warriors and idols at Sianti Gallery, along with other versions of his multidimensional work. I would call this particular minimalistic version a kind of ‘minima moralia’ in connection with Adorno’s famous, confessionary essay on the essence which is hidden in everyday little things, as opposed to grand theories and gestures. An essay on the constant, symbolic and natural loneliness of all intellectuals, written between 1944 and 1947 and dedicated to his companion, Max Horkheimer, under the title ‘Reflections on a damaged life’. And I choose to connect Papagianis with this particular text, because he also is a defender of this special kind of ethos which is hidden in simple gestures, in the art of simplicity and instinct and the search for authenticity in a world all the more alienated.”
Sianti Gallery and Nikas Publications will also be presenting a special album under the tile “Theodoros Papagianis, People staring History in the eye”, created especially for this particular exhibition.