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| Harris Kondosphyris Harris Kondosphyris undermines anything we take for granted as we walk through an exhibition. With a sculpted bust mounted on the ground, he urges us to view “Traffic” in an alternative way; as a cyclical movement, between different points, without there necessarily being a destination and a chosen speed. A technological symbol of traffic is pinned on the bust, a plane. And yet it is built from cement, a material that automatically suspends any notion of freedom of movement and, on the contrary, intensifies the sense of a suffocating immobility. Meanwhile, a series of drawings emerges, with the aim to ‘disrupt’ whatever people view at the exhibition. Drawings are pinned (just like the plane) among the other works; they deliberately function like parasites and spread like a fungus. They move like traffic. These are drawings made using the ink of a ball point pen, a common everyday object. On the whole, they copy pictures from newspapers and other print-outs. They depict a series of selected stories of the past year, presented on a second reading in an expressionistic way. The original story is disguised and assumes the emotionally charged character that the artist chooses to attribute to it. Some of these events took place in Greece, some elsewhere. Yet all of them are interesting both politically and socially, following the assessment of the journalists who selected them. A posteriori, Kondosphyris undertakes to evaluate them through his own eyes, take them into his possession and alter them conceptually like drawings of a modern type of realism. In the history of Greek art, the depiction of real events through painting, functioning like a record, like a documentary, is very rare. The reasons for this may be interpreted in different ways by each one of us. What is important, though, is that realism never ceases to hide an implicit comment, which is open to viewers’ eyes and judgment. Any image representing or copying real events is exposed to reality itself, especially if it is not a direct photographic depiction but is rather rendered in a subjective manner by an individual painter, subject to his own intricate expressive impulses. In raising inevitable questions, he eventually expects viewers to come up with an interpretation using their eyes and minds. Viewers are thus expected to ‘make themselves comfortable’ and reply to these questions. Areti Leopoulou  Download CV |  Εγκληματισμός |
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