LOST AND FOUND
VICTORIA SQUARE EXHIBITION
Opening December 16th 2023
Curator: Laura Dodson
Essay: Mario Naves
Inspired by the reclaiming of an Athenian apartment in the historic neighborhood of Victoria Square, the exhibition LOST and FOUND will delve into themes of memory, transformation, and repurposing within the framework of an architectural maze. In this unique setting, a space that is being renovated into a working studio, twenty eight artists of Greek descent will reflect on the evolving landscapes of time and place, on the rejuvenation of forgotten objects, and on recollections from their own historical narratives.
Participating Artists: Eozen Agopian
Artemis Alcalay
Aimilia Antoniou
Angelos Antonopoulos Lina Bebi
Mary Cox Laura Dodson
Mark Hadjipateras Effie Halivopoulou Viktor Koen
Harris Kondosphyris Alexandros Maganiotis Michalis Manousakis Maro Michalakakos
Eleni Michailou
Christina Mitrentse
Konstandinos Papamihalopoulos Mikella Psara
Ioanna Ralli
Christina Sylvia
Marios Spiliopoulos
Maria Stefossi Maria Schina Zoe Vassiliou
Nikos Vatopoulos
Marios Voutsinas
Marilena Zamboura
Mario Naves
LOST AND FOUND
The notion of "lost and found" is predicated on cooperation, albeit of an inadvertent sort. A given item is misplaced by one individual and subsequently discovered by another. What happens to the object depends on the wiles and generosity of the latter party. Will it be placed in a holding space for retrieval by its original owner or, on the logic of "finders are keepers," be taken as a kind of spoil?
Different circumstances entail different resolutions. Within the history of modernism, the "found object" comes with its own tradition, that of repurposing an item whose original function wasn't crafted with art in mind. That's the "losing" part. Finding, in these terms, is a means of recontextualization and, with that, a presumed new lease on life for the object at hand.
The impetus for this exhibition was the reclamation of a post-war apartment of architectural complexity located in Victoria Square. These environs, due for renovation after this exhibition has ended, will serve as the future studio for Artemis Alcalay, who, invited artist Laura Dodson to curate and bring together "Lost and Found."
It's worth mentioning that this space is within the same building in which Alcalay was born-and- raised. Can a person go home again? The American novelist Thomas Wolfe famously replied in the negative. Dodson and Alcalay suggest that you can go home again, but only under conditions that can underline the changes entailing the personal, the cultural and the historical that have since taken place. Which means, in a roundabout way, that the organizers are more in agreement with Wolfe than we might initially assume.
The artists included in "Lost and Found" work in a gamut of styles and a dizzying array of materials. Paint and canvas are in evidence, but so are photography, printmaking, video, dance, thread, wax, and fabric. Antique books are included, as are new technologies and a settee seemingly transplanted from the 19th-century. Does this multiplicity of forms connote, as Dodson writes, "the imagination's ability to supplant loss and desire with hope?" Taking into account the juxtapositions of artworks within their current surroundings, it would be wise not to bet against it.
Besides, the current surroundings are flush in the middle of Athens, a city in which fragments of antiquity are forever being found, repossessed, and held in situ as a means of confirming the ineluctable reach of human accomplishment. What Dodson has done here isn't quite as epochal, nor does it pretend to be. But there is a sweet correspondence between this exhibition and its host city, between the reclamation of time within reach and times long past gone. In that regard, "Lost and Found" taps into currents that are bigger than any single artist can claim and, in doing so, opens them for the rest of us.
LOST AND FOUND
Mario Naves is a fine arts professor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Hofstra University. He has been the recipient of grants from The City University of New York, Hofstra University, The National Endowment for the Arts, The E.D. Foundation, The Sugarman Foundation and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Naves’ paintings and works-on-paper are represented by the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York. His art criticism has been widely published. He is currently a film critic for The New York Sun. Naves lives and works in New York City. His writings on visual culture can be viewed on the blog Too Much Art.
Laura Dodson is an award-winning photographer, writer, and educator based in New York City and Athens, Greece. She lived in Athens for twenty years, exhibited her art extensively, taught photography at AKTO, and wrote for Photographos Magazine. She currently teaches Digital Image-making at Queens College, City University of New York, and writes portfolio reviews forLensCulture magazine. She is a member of Manhattan’s SohoPhoto Gallery, and is represented by Alex Ferrone Gallery in New York.
Eozen Agopian
Paint and textile combine to form an eccentric personal architecture that embraces modernism and abstraction, while retaining ties that allude to female traditions such as the craft of needlework. Stitching here is used like a patchwork to reveal underlying struggle, and to gauze over trauma.
Opening December 16th 2023
Curator: Laura Dodson
Essay: Mario Naves
Inspired by the reclaiming of an Athenian apartment in the historic neighborhood of Victoria Square, the exhibition LOST and FOUND will delve into themes of memory, transformation, and repurposing within the framework of an architectural maze. In this unique setting, a space that is being renovated into a working studio, twenty eight artists of Greek descent will reflect on the evolving landscapes of time and place, on the rejuvenation of forgotten objects, and on recollections from their own historical narratives.
Participating Artists: Eozen Agopian
Artemis Alcalay
Aimilia Antoniou
Angelos Antonopoulos Lina Bebi
Mary Cox Laura Dodson
Mark Hadjipateras Effie Halivopoulou Viktor Koen
Harris Kondosphyris Alexandros Maganiotis Michalis Manousakis Maro Michalakakos
Eleni Michailou
Christina Mitrentse
Konstandinos Papamihalopoulos Mikella Psara
Ioanna Ralli
Christina Sylvia
Marios Spiliopoulos
Maria Stefossi Maria Schina Zoe Vassiliou
Nikos Vatopoulos
Marios Voutsinas
Marilena Zamboura
Mario Naves
LOST AND FOUND
The notion of "lost and found" is predicated on cooperation, albeit of an inadvertent sort. A given item is misplaced by one individual and subsequently discovered by another. What happens to the object depends on the wiles and generosity of the latter party. Will it be placed in a holding space for retrieval by its original owner or, on the logic of "finders are keepers," be taken as a kind of spoil?
Different circumstances entail different resolutions. Within the history of modernism, the "found object" comes with its own tradition, that of repurposing an item whose original function wasn't crafted with art in mind. That's the "losing" part. Finding, in these terms, is a means of recontextualization and, with that, a presumed new lease on life for the object at hand.
The impetus for this exhibition was the reclamation of a post-war apartment of architectural complexity located in Victoria Square. These environs, due for renovation after this exhibition has ended, will serve as the future studio for Artemis Alcalay, who, invited artist Laura Dodson to curate and bring together "Lost and Found."
It's worth mentioning that this space is within the same building in which Alcalay was born-and- raised. Can a person go home again? The American novelist Thomas Wolfe famously replied in the negative. Dodson and Alcalay suggest that you can go home again, but only under conditions that can underline the changes entailing the personal, the cultural and the historical that have since taken place. Which means, in a roundabout way, that the organizers are more in agreement with Wolfe than we might initially assume.
The artists included in "Lost and Found" work in a gamut of styles and a dizzying array of materials. Paint and canvas are in evidence, but so are photography, printmaking, video, dance, thread, wax, and fabric. Antique books are included, as are new technologies and a settee seemingly transplanted from the 19th-century. Does this multiplicity of forms connote, as Dodson writes, "the imagination's ability to supplant loss and desire with hope?" Taking into account the juxtapositions of artworks within their current surroundings, it would be wise not to bet against it.
Besides, the current surroundings are flush in the middle of Athens, a city in which fragments of antiquity are forever being found, repossessed, and held in situ as a means of confirming the ineluctable reach of human accomplishment. What Dodson has done here isn't quite as epochal, nor does it pretend to be. But there is a sweet correspondence between this exhibition and its host city, between the reclamation of time within reach and times long past gone. In that regard, "Lost and Found" taps into currents that are bigger than any single artist can claim and, in doing so, opens them for the rest of us.
LOST AND FOUND
Mario Naves is a fine arts professor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Hofstra University. He has been the recipient of grants from The City University of New York, Hofstra University, The National Endowment for the Arts, The E.D. Foundation, The Sugarman Foundation and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Naves’ paintings and works-on-paper are represented by the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York. His art criticism has been widely published. He is currently a film critic for The New York Sun. Naves lives and works in New York City. His writings on visual culture can be viewed on the blog Too Much Art.
Laura Dodson is an award-winning photographer, writer, and educator based in New York City and Athens, Greece. She lived in Athens for twenty years, exhibited her art extensively, taught photography at AKTO, and wrote for Photographos Magazine. She currently teaches Digital Image-making at Queens College, City University of New York, and writes portfolio reviews forLensCulture magazine. She is a member of Manhattan’s SohoPhoto Gallery, and is represented by Alex Ferrone Gallery in New York.
Eozen Agopian
Paint and textile combine to form an eccentric personal architecture that embraces modernism and abstraction, while retaining ties that allude to female traditions such as the craft of needlework. Stitching here is used like a patchwork to reveal underlying struggle, and to gauze over trauma.
Eozen Agopian. Covered Again. Mixed Media with thread, acrylic and fabric, 2015
Artemis Alcalay (with Foteini Giamakou and Antonia Dassi)
An interactive project following an interview with Antonia Dassi, a Greek immigrant from Albania, who describes the home of her dreams in detail. In a new installment of her continuing obsession with the home as a socio-psychological site, the artist, acts here as an intermediary between the model who works in other people’s houses, and her fantasy vision of a dream home of her own. Architect Foteini Giamakou recreates this vision in a professional (yet untrue) design, which includes the landscape of the woman’s village. A commentary on displacement, and the imagination’s ability to supplant loss and desire with hope.
Artemis Alcalay. Dream House. Concept and Video Installation, 2023 Architect: Foteini Giamakou Interview and participation: Antonia Dassi
Nina Alcalay/Artemis Alcalay
A collaboration between sisters, one a dancer, one a visual artist. During the pandemic when families were isolated together, and the world was turned on its head, the two choreographed a production. The improvisational movements, captured on video, create unexpected shapes in/on/around the couch. Displaying a dress from their mother’s closet as a costume, and a couch upholstered from their father’s fabric shop as a prop, the video plays on a loop, addressing confinement and disorientation, as well as how the inner landscape of thought, memory and dream, is contained within a familiar domestic space.
Nina Alcalay/Artemis Alcalay
A collaboration between sisters, one a dancer, one a visual artist. During the pandemic when families were isolated together, and the world was turned on its head, the two choreographed a production. The improvisational movements, captured on video, create unexpected shapes in/on/around the couch. Displaying a dress from their mother’s closet as a costume, and a couch upholstered from their father’s fabric shop as a prop, the video plays on a loop, addressing confinement and disorientation, as well as how the inner landscape of thought, memory and dream, is contained within a familiar domestic space.
Shapes in Black, White & Grey, 2023 Video Installation: Artemis Alcalay Dance Improvisation: Nina Alcalay Music: Arvo Part “Tabula Rasa”
Angelos Antonopoulos
Suspended castles in the air, originating from the world of fairy tales, are distorted like melted wax in this playful yet ominous sculptural construction. The artist delves into the organic and physical nature of an architecture consisting of the residues and ruins of childhood objects.
Angelos Antonopoulos. Red. Mixed Media Construction, 2023
Lina Bebi
In a painful yet liberating gesture of unpacking and evaluating several decades of her stored artwork, Bebi encounters an old, battered picture of herself in front of a student drawing, along with the actual drawing itself. With a 39 year gap, the scene is reenacted in a self-portrait which embodies a meditation on aging, but also speaks to the perseverance of the artistic spirit through the passage of time.
In a painful yet liberating gesture of unpacking and evaluating several decades of her stored artwork, Bebi encounters an old, battered picture of herself in front of a student drawing, along with the actual drawing itself. With a 39 year gap, the scene is reenacted in a self-portrait which embodies a meditation on aging, but also speaks to the perseverance of the artistic spirit through the passage of time.
Lina Bebi. Impersonator I / Impersonator ΙΙ 1984/2023
Mary Cox
The Agave is also called the “century plant” due to the many years it takes for the plant to send up tall tree-like flowers, which signal its imminent demise. It takes its name from the Greek “agavos” meaning “illustrious”, and is ubiquitous in Athens and surrounding areas. Its long tragic life cycle evokes the passing of time and its transformation into the new, a metaphor for aging, change and political resistance.
Mary Cox. Agave 2 . Acrylic and Oil on canvas, 2016
Laura Dodson
Objects remain, are forgotten or collected, but allow us to continue our conversations with the past. We remember and reimagine through these material relics, while reality and fiction meet in our attempts to romanticize what is gone.
Laura Dodson
Objects remain, are forgotten or collected, but allow us to continue our conversations with the past. We remember and reimagine through these material relics, while reality and fiction meet in our attempts to romanticize what is gone.
Laura Dodson. I Lost the Key. Archival Pigment Print, 2023
Mark Hadjipateras
An indirect commentary on hyper-consumerism. Societal excess produced by technology, spending, greed, and indifference to others, is monumentalized in these idiosyncratic sculptures. Slick and graceful, the weight of metal nevertheless plays against the minimal and crude content of the containers. Perhaps the importance and price we place on the possessions we transport with us, belie harsh and vapid realities.
An indirect commentary on hyper-consumerism. Societal excess produced by technology, spending, greed, and indifference to others, is monumentalized in these idiosyncratic sculptures. Slick and graceful, the weight of metal nevertheless plays against the minimal and crude content of the containers. Perhaps the importance and price we place on the possessions we transport with us, belie harsh and vapid realities.
Mark Hadjipateras. Excess Luggage A. Mixed media Metal Sculpture from Syros Series.
Effie Halivopoulou
Visual and acoustic material has been drawn from a span of two years spent traveling and experiencing both urban and rural environments. The video is the visualization of an emotional bodily sense of a reflected tree in a pool in New Jersey, a father’s hands while cultivating the soil, the sound of the Aladinos cave on Andros, the frogs that croak in a lake in Tbilisi, the motionless trees in Batumi, the industrial hum of downtown New York, the wheat agitated by the wind on Andros and the shadow in the hills of Metsovo.
Visual and acoustic material has been drawn from a span of two years spent traveling and experiencing both urban and rural environments. The video is the visualization of an emotional bodily sense of a reflected tree in a pool in New Jersey, a father’s hands while cultivating the soil, the sound of the Aladinos cave on Andros, the frogs that croak in a lake in Tbilisi, the motionless trees in Batumi, the industrial hum of downtown New York, the wheat agitated by the wind on Andros and the shadow in the hills of Metsovo.
Ripple, Video, 4 Min. 2019
Effie Halivopoulou: concept, videography and sound mapping
Nikos Falagas: animation, montage
Tim Ward: sound design
Effie Halivopoulou: concept, videography and sound mapping
Nikos Falagas: animation, montage
Tim Ward: sound design
Viktor Koen
Belonging to a larger body of work titled “Greetings from Pandemic Island”, Comemorandum is a photosynthesis of rescued, reclaimed, and recycled images from the last century, which document the experiences and crippling loss of life on the island of Manhattan. While relatively ancient, the works function as a bridge to realities unfolding even as we speak. Such transchronical reminders that humanity prevails when we hold one another close to the heart, above and beyond our differences, are ancient but never old, tender but never weak, desperate but never lost.
Viktor Koen
Belonging to a larger body of work titled “Greetings from Pandemic Island”, Comemorandum is a photosynthesis of rescued, reclaimed, and recycled images from the last century, which document the experiences and crippling loss of life on the island of Manhattan. While relatively ancient, the works function as a bridge to realities unfolding even as we speak. Such transchronical reminders that humanity prevails when we hold one another close to the heart, above and beyond our differences, are ancient but never old, tender but never weak, desperate but never lost.
Viktor Koen. Comemorandum Archival Pigment Print, 2021, (art collection: Jewish Museum of Greece)
Harris Kondosphyris and Aimilia Antoniou
Wax bricks revealing photographs of a demolished family home embedded within them, are stacked, creating the semblance of a wall. Crows constructed from found and laminated cement appear to be feasting on these bricks. Through their intervention however, they also act as carriers for lost memories.
Harris Kondosphyris and Emily Antoniou. Collectors of Emptiness and Void. Mixed Media Installation. 2023
Alexandros Maganiotis
The purist aesthetic of the iconic buildings of modernist architecture, conflict here with hybrid sketched protagonists dressed in costumes which better belong to the Belle Epoque of earlier days. This flight through time and varying media creates uncanny and comical transitions.
Alexandros Maganiotis
The purist aesthetic of the iconic buildings of modernist architecture, conflict here with hybrid sketched protagonists dressed in costumes which better belong to the Belle Epoque of earlier days. This flight through time and varying media creates uncanny and comical transitions.
Alexandros Maganiotis. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Mixed media drawing and digital collage on plexiglass, 2021
Michalis Manousakis
Εxistential dimensions combine with the world as memory. Through symbol, the paintingpoetically conveys the mind’s ability to become a bridge for the path of dreams and wishes.
Michalis Manousakis
Εxistential dimensions combine with the world as memory. Through symbol, the paintingpoetically conveys the mind’s ability to become a bridge for the path of dreams and wishes.
Michalis Manousakis. Acrylic and charcoal on wood, 2011
Μοιάζει επιθυμία χαμένη, το πέρασμα απέναντι.
Όμως, ο νους, γέφυρα γίνεται για τις διαδρομές του ονείρου.
M.M.
Όμως, ο νους, γέφυρα γίνεται για τις διαδρομές του ονείρου.
M.M.
Maro Michalakakos
A piece from the installation To All of Us, created for the Hamidiye mosque in the castle of Chios. Outside the mosque is a cemetery where the women’s graves have flowers carved on them. A symbol of beauty and brevity, this rose is one of them.
Maro Michalakakos
A piece from the installation To All of Us, created for the Hamidiye mosque in the castle of Chios. Outside the mosque is a cemetery where the women’s graves have flowers carved on them. A symbol of beauty and brevity, this rose is one of them.
Maro Michalakakos. To All of Us. Shaved velvet on antique settee, 2023
Eleni Michailou
The work Person in Pieces / Toy, which sold at an art fair in Athens, was bought back by the artist a decade later. The blocks, representing a malleable identity, display the parts of ourselves we lose, reconstruct, and regain with the passage of time.
The work Person in Pieces / Toy, which sold at an art fair in Athens, was bought back by the artist a decade later. The blocks, representing a malleable identity, display the parts of ourselves we lose, reconstruct, and regain with the passage of time.
Eleni Michailou. Person in Pieces/Toy. Mixed media on wood 1994-2023
“Τον Μάιο του 1994 πουλήθηκε το έργο μου Άνθρωπος κομμάτια / παιχνίδι σε μία έκθεση στην Αθήνα. Λίγο μετά προσπάθησα να το αγοράσω πίσω, χωρίς επιτυχία. Τον Ιούνιο του 2023 με ενημέρωσαν ότι το έργο πωλείται. Το πήρα!” Ε. Μ.
Christina Mitrentse
Reflections on the physical and social nature of vessels for learning, emerge through the inventive repurposing of books in these playful sculptures. A meticulous process of twisting, cutting, and binding, results in the creation of structures that possess both organic and architectural qualities. In the context of a digital era of hyperlinks and e-learning however, what does the materiality of a book signify?
Christina Mitrentse
Reflections on the physical and social nature of vessels for learning, emerge through the inventive repurposing of books in these playful sculptures. A meticulous process of twisting, cutting, and binding, results in the creation of structures that possess both organic and architectural qualities. In the context of a digital era of hyperlinks and e-learning however, what does the materiality of a book signify?
Christina Mitrentse. Welcome (Pineapple). Handcrafted books on geometry, end papers, gold leaf. 2023 Courtesy citronne gallery
Konstandinos Papamichalopoulos
Linotypes that reference the brothels that once populated central Athens and Victoria Square, that still exist and are ever changing, that are ephemeral and mystified, catering to a more diverse clientele as the social landscape changes.
Konstandinos Papamichalopoulos. Shunga. Woodcut, artist’s proof, 2023
Mikella Psara
The meaning and secrets of symbols, the relationship between memory and the image, present themselves in these works where the subject is an imprint, an intimate leftover from time, a vestige of an artifact which we hope to repossess.
The meaning and secrets of symbols, the relationship between memory and the image, present themselves in these works where the subject is an imprint, an intimate leftover from time, a vestige of an artifact which we hope to repossess.
Mikella Psara from the series “Images Saved”, mixed media on canvas, 2004
Ioanna Ralli
The reshaping of a turbulent inner world through the creation of Mandalas - the symmetrical designs done by Buddhist monks. Cosmomorphy represents the psyche’s unconscious need to evolve, to reorganize itself in the face of chaos.
Ioanna Ralli. Cosmomorphy. Acrylic on paper, 2021
Maria Schina
An installation comprised of photographs and letters from Greek immigrants to a relative they left behind in the homeland. These were found in an abandoned house in Kythera, and speak of the displacement created by migration, and the important links that bind dislocated families. The fragments of photos, preserved in wax, lie like sacred urns of a distant past. Their new material existence alters their viewing experience however, and the resulting object seems to be indifferent to the information it once carried, only caring about the magic that "encapsulates time". The retrieval of memory thus becomes more complete, recalling all sensations. As for the past, it is implied as dynamic, continuous, and full of the agony of separation and reconnection.
Maria Schina, Pixels of Time, mixed media installation with wax and photographs, 2016-2023
Christina-Sylvia Simantira
In a life of abundance, material and immaterial things almost define our identity. How would it be if only the space that they filled remained? Would this space exist? Is it possible for us to create a productive space existing from the lack of things, one that is dynamic, light and flexible?
Christina-Sylvia Simantira. Ghost of L(a)ck. installation of paper boxes/Christmas Lights, 2023
Marios Spiliopoulos
The recovery of ephemeral news from papers. Lost incidents, affairs from the past, facts that got buried under the weight of recent events are recycled in the now. Lost, found, and remembered in these small evanescent monuments.
Marios Spiliopoulos. Recycled newspaper montage, 2023
Maria Stefossi
A photographic documentation of educational institutions in peripheral Greek communities unfolds in a rich exploration of history, culture, and memory. Artistic interpretation breathes life into the past and recreates spirits from these havens of learning.
Maria Stefossi. (from Scholeíon Enkómion publication) Primary School in Doxato, Drama. Digital Photograph, 2019
Nikos Vatopoulos
“Fragments of memory, unexpected traces, house interiors, secret passages, shards of neoclassical coatings and terracotta colors, demolished house contours, wall textures, cages of sanctity and forgotten objects and useless inscriptions. A world in retreat, in the shadow of everyday life, which, however, keeps its imprint clear.” N.V.
Nikos Vatopoulos. Unseen Athens, Digital Photograph, 2023
Zoe Vassiliou
A passenger intersects with the disorienting world of an abandoned house, that seems haunted by its prior incarnations. Curiosity, the instability of personal identity, the wonder of discovery and the fear of transformation collide in this psychedelic Through the Looking Glass narrative.
Zoe Vassiliou. Is There Anybody in There? Stop motion film, 2023 (Music: Pink Floyd “Hello I Love You)
Marios Voutsinas
Hand-made glass lanterns ascending a staircase, each represent a family member or close friend who has passed. They act as channels for revisiting missing loved ones. Carved, shaped, and decorated individually, they commemorate a memory, and fill absence with light.
Marios Voutsinas. Revisited. Glass vessels with light, 2023
Marilena Zamboura
Familiar faces imprint their presence with color on paper. They exist among us as specters, spirits which briefly impede the ever-changing social landscapes that impose themselves upon us.
Marilena Zamboura. The Appearance of My Mother. Mixed media on paper, 2018