"Space Mark" showcases the work of three young artists from Thessaloniki. The goal of the project is to give the opportunity to three very young artists, who have just graduated from the fine arts school, to show their work in an exhibition organised according to the highest professional standards. This clearly educational experience can prove to be a decisive springboard for the career. The idea has been warningly adopted by Goethe Institut Thessaloniki, who is actually exploring the possibility to turn this into an annual event. Similarly, art theorists Sania Papa and Maria Kenanidou enthusiastically responded to my invitation to meet the artists and write texts for their work.
Christos Savvidis Curator Surpassing extended spaces
Rania Bellou, Haris Pallas and Giorgos Tsalamanis, form “Space Mark” (it could be the name of a spacecraft or a video game), that is a unified notional space/action place consisting of three personal interventions with indirect correlations and logically associated references to the fundamental meanings of space, time and perception of the real or the “deformed” sphere of imagination. The artists transform a given architectural space through converging installations (video, painting, moving/animated image) where intimate materials, images of the amorphous, abstract or familiar natural environment and drawn “seizures” of the surrounding space, co-exist individually but also interactively. Their work aims at exercising the spectator's eye through an introspection that is almost metaphysical so as the spectator will recognize the familiar or unwonted and will trace certain three or two dimensional spaces. Thus, the spectator is challenged to enter into a special, interactive journey so as to perceive and appropriate –even ephemerally– the known/unknown through a channel where senses are activated, and the polychromy and kaleidoscopic ejection and succession of abstract images/shapes/patterns, act as catalysts.
Through a kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of chromatic fragments, Rania Bellou shifts the sense of space and time giving a theatrical dimension to the multicolored contrasts and the logical associated shifts of the eye, in a space-time where a disturbed environment in motion is being fragmentarily recognized. Haris Pallas uses a simple, edible material and records a usable gesture, interpreting with chthonic humor the phased metamorphosis of a shapeless space/mass to a distinct restoration of the “truth”. Giorgos Tsalamanis audaciously occupies the wall surface and intervenes with heterogeneous dispersed, sketched gestures, perceiving and recording the “sound waveforms” alternating in different tonalities. Concrete and at the same time subtle fragmental artistic inspirations are clashing or are analysed in relation to the cosmos and lead the spectator’s eye to a place of introspection and meditation, a place wherein the imaginary and disturbed natural space/landscape of the bustling and multicolored everyday life is activated. “As long as the world takes the deliriant path, maybe artists also adopt a deliriant angle of view wherein it is better to be lost in extremes than in extremities.” (Jean Beaudrillard, “The Transparency of evil. Essays of Extreme Phenomena”, Exantas-Nimata Publications, Athens: 1996, page 7). Dr. Sania Papa Art theorist, Director of the Contemporary Art Centre of Thessaloniki An escapement point within an alternative space
The artists Harris Pallas, Rania Bellou and Giorgos Tsalamanis, in their own personal style and unique artistic vocabulary, and through the coexistence and osmosis of traditional elements and new technologies, as well as the heterogeneous management of image, video-installations and painting, emphasize on the relation of image-space, conveying us to their own “space mark”. The artists deform the image-space, shift and transform the natural relations of spectator-artistic work, spectator-what-can-be-expected, and through these experimentations, they try to intervene to our perceptual processes, calling us to visit and see “Space Mark” through their eyes and personal experience.
In the Harris Pallas’s space-in-space video installation titled “Submarine”, we discern a particularity in the management of space/image. In the showroom, the spectator can observe the artistic work in the same optic angle that the artist used when the work was conceived, that is from top to bottom, in an effort to add perspective. The manner that the artist deals with the reception angle as well as with the plasticity of space and image volumes produces correlations of depth with an everyday material that is “discharged” of its routine use and gets a new life and existence. The artist invites us to recognize and redefine the thematic material that is emerging disarmingly simple and familiar. Thus the work proves to be deeply creative and genuinely unique artwork winking at us meaningfully. Familiar images are transformed to unwonted morpho-plastic spaces; the artist, in a playful manner and making a clear statement on space, shape and matter, gives meaning to those spaces revealing thus the truth of things. Only on the last second the artist releases us from the feeling of weakness resulting from our inability to define the final point, and rewards us with relief since this point is successfully identified with the familiar, enlarged detail. Rania Bellou, in her fascinating video-installation titled “Digi-World” questions the boundaries between real and imaginary space by reducing the distances through senses, sounds, emotions and excitement and transforms the image’s measurement unit to a measurement unit of our perceptual conscience for space. The space encloses -and does not encircle- spectators in the showroom, it makes them feel that they are merging into their senses, in an experiment of interaction between them and the artwork, between reality and illusion, between real and fictitious. The space invites spectators to an illusive experience where motion is smoothly entered into the motion of space, absorbing the energy of human presence. This space-image receives a new substance, it becomes autonomous, it breaths. Through mass production and pixel expansion, the artist deforms the traditional principles of a space structure, forming a system grid of the smallest component of the digital image. By excessively shifting the scale, she deconstructs the image- space by the use of the same structural element, controls the spectator’s visual and kinesthetic experience, and creates optic illusions by questioning the validity of senses, introducing us in her personal wonderland. The imposing space-image of Giorgos Tsalamanis titled “Subwoofer” refers to primitive images of the Creation. The artwork is presented as a monumental sound source wherefrom shades of sound are generated. The artist is on a tightrope between the boundaries of a performance and abstraction, emphasizing on the painting process and the problematic of representation. He underlines this particular contrast upon the surface: something so tangible and concrete -having material substance- indicating at the same time a presence beyond the surface. Sound and color –in a dialectical relation- are born and exceed the boundaries of the canvas, go beyond the real world and after following the never-ending route of light they are diffracted to an aligned course to infinity. In the middle of this course, reflections upon natural or imaginary obstacles are introduced and sounds are jammed and interacting and are either incorporated or destroyed. An image of the space, either real or imaginary, is formed with continuous imprint of sound. The artist’s usual theme drifts us to an inner-imaginary world with strong emotions where sounds seem to sway between reality and fantasy just like the sounds of our dreams that only we can hear. “Space Mark” is an escapement point within an alternative space where in this “small, great world” constitutes a space-dot that is essential to us because, as Massimiliano Gioni said, “our space is not enough, we need a whole parallel reality”. The space through the work of artists can be transformed but the world always stays the same… Maria Kenanidou Art Historian |
Qoethe Institut Thessaloniki |
