Symbols/Objects: Stories and Facts Untold II
2000 | Foundation for Hellenic Culture |Berlin , Riverside Studios | London (catalog, CD-Rom)
Halivopoulou's installation "Silent Synapses" comprises three hanging rice-paper drapes that house a copper armature linked to sinewy black flex through which electricity surges. These in turn snake across the floor and connect to blackened nodes housing light bulbs attached to a vividly painted red wall. A further wall supports a series of light boxes containing abstract images of the female form.
F r o m : " S y m b o l s / O b j e c t s : S t o r i e s a n d F a c t s U n t o l d " C a t a l o g u e T e x t
A synapse is the point at which a nerve impulse is relayed to an adjacent neuron, passing information from cell to another. The so-called "silent synapses" lie dormant, silent archives waiting to release specific knowledge towards certain goals. These synapses map the progression of an individual and create what biologists describe as the "uniqueness of each human."
Throughout art history "the body" has been employed as metaphoric site. This has continued to be the case, from the draped sculptural figures of Kiki Smith; the photographic self portraits of John Coplans and Jo Spence to the video installations of Mona Hatoum. Halivopoulou's work explores the exterior and interior regions of the body, suggesting an investigation of bodily symbolism. The resulting form is seductively beautiful, the physical unease of encountering the work is suspended, shrouded in color and texture. Interiority is encountered through the metaphoric use of materials, layers of translucent rice paper are suggestive of flesh and bodily tissue, nerve impulses represented in the form of black cabling. Einstein once stated that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the most fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. For Halivopoulou the quest is to represent the intangible, the unseen, revealing the mechanics of a stored memory hidden deep within.
____________________________________
Mark Beasley, Writer and Curator, London; Catalogue text, exhibition "Symbols/Objects: Stories and Facts Untold". USA, Britain, Germany, Greece; 1999-2001.
F r o m : "N a t i o n a l R e v i e w s S c u l p t u r e M a g a z i n e " "Symbols/Objects at the C.Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore"
What can be done as an artist if, at least in the eyes of much of the world, your civilization peaked 2500 years ago? Was the ideal ever achieved or is it the sum of accumulated and handed down memory? The three Greek artists in "Symbols/Objects: Stories and Facts Untold" explore these and other questions related to knowledge, how it originates, how it's transmitted, and how it shapes personal and cultural identity. Their objects trace their search of abstract symbols and their physical embodiments that can express, however tenuously, these intellectual constructs.
�Effie Halivopoulou's work is at once the most elusive and the most grounded in the body as a focus of interaction and exchange. While Ziogas and Antonopoulos suggest the aftereffects of some transforming event, Halivopoulou conjures the process itself in her glowing Interactors II. The installation consists of three hanging rice paper scrolls attached by wires to a square grid of 12 wall boxes. Light acts as an indicator of energy and the cords as the means of transmission. Visually akin to the work of Christian Boltansky, Halivopoulou's installation deals with genes and language. Embedded into the vellumlike surfaces of the scrolls and boxes are nearly indecipherable fragments of ancient Greek letters. In addition to evoking an earlier form of writing surface, the scrolls assume an anthropomorphic quality. The two diaphanous and flesh-colored ones, in particular, have breast-like swellings with cords sprouting from the nipples. Internally lit forms, resembling pods or cocoons, nestle in the scrolls' membranous webs. By contrast, the third scroll is black from the application of layers of graphite and charcoal with amber highlights; its swirling rhythms appear geological as much as they recall giant fingerprints. Facing the scrolls, the wall boxes come in three varieties: fleshy ones that, like their scroll counterparts, suggest the body and sensory-based memory; dark ones with an interlaced overlay, which, for the artist, refer to language-based memory; and a single red one that evokes the heart and smoldering ashes. These coded metaphors of biology and the intellect allude to a mysterious incubation of symbiosis between ancient knowledge and new life.
____________________________________
Sarah Tanguy, March 2000, Vol.19, No2
F r o m : " S y m b o l s / O b j e c t s : S t o r i e s a n d F a c t s U n t o l d " C a t a l o g u e T e x t
The synapses are the positions where a neural axon of a cell is functionally connected with a part of another neuron. This conjunction causes the transportation of information from one cell to another. The neurotransmitters are released like packages of information in the synaptic gaps, the extremely little spaces between a neural axon and a dendrite. They disrupt a succession of facts on a molecular level and thus the miracle of communication is created between the two cells. The positions of the synapses and furthermore those of the nervous paths are not predetermined but they depend on and they alter along with the habits and the motional behaviour of the human accordingly.
The synapses that do not reveal a detectable firing activity - the so called silent synapses - are mysterious, since they withold information in archives until they use it for a specific reason and towards a specific goal. These synapses - the silent ones - potentially affect the brain maps, and create the background offering the possibility of new paths being born. As a result, they influence the evolving morphology of the paths and they guarantee their uniqueness, the oneness of each human.
The works of the series "Silent Synapses" in an attempt to reinvent the body, talk about its millions of implosions which trace and reveal its uniqueness. The works are dynamically related by interacting with each other every moment. They transform successively and reproduce themselves circularly, just like the body does, guided by the nervous system.
____________________________________
D. Raptopoulos, Biologist Ph.D.; Catalogue text, exhibition "Symbols/Objects: Stories and Facts Untold". USA, Britain, Germany, Greece; 1999-2001.
F r o m : " S y m b o l s / O b j e c t s : S t o r i e s a n d F a c t s U n t o l d " C a t a l o g u e T e x t
A synapse is the point at which a nerve impulse is relayed to an adjacent neuron, passing information from cell to another. The so-called "silent synapses" lie dormant, silent archives waiting to release specific knowledge towards certain goals. These synapses map the progression of an individual and create what biologists describe as the "uniqueness of each human."
Throughout art history "the body" has been employed as metaphoric site. This has continued to be the case, from the draped sculptural figures of Kiki Smith; the photographic self portraits of John Coplans and Jo Spence to the video installations of Mona Hatoum. Halivopoulou's work explores the exterior and interior regions of the body, suggesting an investigation of bodily symbolism. The resulting form is seductively beautiful, the physical unease of encountering the work is suspended, shrouded in color and texture. Interiority is encountered through the metaphoric use of materials, layers of translucent rice paper are suggestive of flesh and bodily tissue, nerve impulses represented in the form of black cabling. Einstein once stated that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the most fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. For Halivopoulou the quest is to represent the intangible, the unseen, revealing the mechanics of a stored memory hidden deep within.
____________________________________
Mark Beasley, Writer and Curator, London; Catalogue text, exhibition "Symbols/Objects: Stories and Facts Untold". USA, Britain, Germany, Greece; 1999-2001.
F r o m : "N a t i o n a l R e v i e w s S c u l p t u r e M a g a z i n e " "Symbols/Objects at the C.Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore"
What can be done as an artist if, at least in the eyes of much of the world, your civilization peaked 2500 years ago? Was the ideal ever achieved or is it the sum of accumulated and handed down memory? The three Greek artists in "Symbols/Objects: Stories and Facts Untold" explore these and other questions related to knowledge, how it originates, how it's transmitted, and how it shapes personal and cultural identity. Their objects trace their search of abstract symbols and their physical embodiments that can express, however tenuously, these intellectual constructs.
�Effie Halivopoulou's work is at once the most elusive and the most grounded in the body as a focus of interaction and exchange. While Ziogas and Antonopoulos suggest the aftereffects of some transforming event, Halivopoulou conjures the process itself in her glowing Interactors II. The installation consists of three hanging rice paper scrolls attached by wires to a square grid of 12 wall boxes. Light acts as an indicator of energy and the cords as the means of transmission. Visually akin to the work of Christian Boltansky, Halivopoulou's installation deals with genes and language. Embedded into the vellumlike surfaces of the scrolls and boxes are nearly indecipherable fragments of ancient Greek letters. In addition to evoking an earlier form of writing surface, the scrolls assume an anthropomorphic quality. The two diaphanous and flesh-colored ones, in particular, have breast-like swellings with cords sprouting from the nipples. Internally lit forms, resembling pods or cocoons, nestle in the scrolls' membranous webs. By contrast, the third scroll is black from the application of layers of graphite and charcoal with amber highlights; its swirling rhythms appear geological as much as they recall giant fingerprints. Facing the scrolls, the wall boxes come in three varieties: fleshy ones that, like their scroll counterparts, suggest the body and sensory-based memory; dark ones with an interlaced overlay, which, for the artist, refer to language-based memory; and a single red one that evokes the heart and smoldering ashes. These coded metaphors of biology and the intellect allude to a mysterious incubation of symbiosis between ancient knowledge and new life.
____________________________________
Sarah Tanguy, March 2000, Vol.19, No2
F r o m : " S y m b o l s / O b j e c t s : S t o r i e s a n d F a c t s U n t o l d " C a t a l o g u e T e x t
The synapses are the positions where a neural axon of a cell is functionally connected with a part of another neuron. This conjunction causes the transportation of information from one cell to another. The neurotransmitters are released like packages of information in the synaptic gaps, the extremely little spaces between a neural axon and a dendrite. They disrupt a succession of facts on a molecular level and thus the miracle of communication is created between the two cells. The positions of the synapses and furthermore those of the nervous paths are not predetermined but they depend on and they alter along with the habits and the motional behaviour of the human accordingly.
The synapses that do not reveal a detectable firing activity - the so called silent synapses - are mysterious, since they withold information in archives until they use it for a specific reason and towards a specific goal. These synapses - the silent ones - potentially affect the brain maps, and create the background offering the possibility of new paths being born. As a result, they influence the evolving morphology of the paths and they guarantee their uniqueness, the oneness of each human.
The works of the series "Silent Synapses" in an attempt to reinvent the body, talk about its millions of implosions which trace and reveal its uniqueness. The works are dynamically related by interacting with each other every moment. They transform successively and reproduce themselves circularly, just like the body does, guided by the nervous system.
____________________________________
D. Raptopoulos, Biologist Ph.D.; Catalogue text, exhibition "Symbols/Objects: Stories and Facts Untold". USA, Britain, Germany, Greece; 1999-2001.
