Apostolos Georgiou Solos at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens

Written by Eva Paladouris Thursday, 09 June 2011 22:46

Athens.- The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens presents a solo exhibition by Apostolos Georgiou, one of the most important contemporary Greek painters. The exhibition constitutes the largest presentation of Georgiou’s work to date, focusing on works that he produced over approximately the past decade. The exhibition aims at assembling and throwing into relief his mature painterly work, as well as a substantial part of his recent artistic investigation. "Apostolos Georgiou: Paintings" will remain on view until September 18th.

Apostolos Georgiou's painterly work is characterized by a distinctive personal style, which began to be formed in the 1980s. It is an anthropocentric and markedly narrative painting, where the artist draws his subjects from people’s everyday lives. Interpersonal relationships, and personal anxieties and deadlocks, and conveys thm with a subtle sense of humour, sarcasm and affection, throwing into relief the existential and autobiographical character of his work, as well as his central questionings of human relationships and human existence. The exhibition assembles forty six large and medium-sized paintings, acrylics on canvas, from this period, as well as a recent series of colour mixed-media drawings on paper. It also features a video projection that is composed of forty two sketches, made with ballpoint pen and coloured pencil on paper, which constitute the pages of a sketchbook drawn by the artist, one after another, within the space of a few hours. The exhibition will occupy all the main exhibition spaces of the museum.

Apostolos Georgiou was born in Thessaloniki in 1952. Between 1971 and 1973 he studied architecture at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and later he studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti, in Florence (1973-75) from where he graduated. He lived in Italy (Milan and Venice) until 1980, when he returned to Greece. Since then he has been living and working between Athens and Skopelos.  He has held numerous solo shows in galleries like Kalfayan Galleries, Athens and Thessaloniki / Zina Athanassiadou gallery, Thessaloniki / Xippas Gallery, Paris and Athens, 2005 / Rebecca Camhi gallery, Athens, and he has participated in important group exhibitions in Greece and abroad such as: Greek art, Sem-art gallery, Monte Carlo, 2011 / The First Image, Centre Regional d'Art Contemporain Languedoc Rousillon, Sête, France, 2009 / Who is There?, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in the framework of the 1st Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, 2007 / Odyssey: Greek art from the last fifty years, Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich, 2006 / Anos 80 Una Topologia, Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal, 2006 / Breakthrough! Greece 2004, Sala Arcala 31, Madrid, 2004 / DESTE Prize 2003, DESTE Foundation, Athens, 2003 / Beltsios Collection, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, 2003 / Outlook International Art exhibition, Athens, 2003 / Vanguards, The Beltsios Collection, Center for Contemporary Art of Kalambaka, 2002 / Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin, 1998 / Wigmore Gallery, London, 1997.

The National Museum of Contemporary Art began its operation in 2000. Its foundation came to cover a huge gap that the decades long absence of an analogous institution for contemporary international art had created in Athens. The decision to start immediately with exhibitions, principally those of a critical and experimental character, even before the museum had its own premises or collections, was dictated by exactly this need. Exhibitions of contemporary art were taking and still take place in Athens. Still, there are no museums without collections, and since its foundation, and whilst waiting for its permanent home to be completed, the museum has been assembling a remarkable nucleus of works of art by Greek and international artists. The collection has been built on selective rather than encyclopaedic grounds, to promote advanced tendencies and critical explorations of the artistic present but also its historical depths which reach as far as the beginning of the second half of the 20th century. The museum's goal, both by exhibitions and its collections, is to offer all visitors a view of the "other" dimension which in our time cannot be conceived outside transcultural and ecumenical patterns. Within the framework of the EMST collection policy, the permanent collections are built based on two axes, historical and synchronic and cover the field of painting, installations, photography, video, new media, architecture and industrial design. Their enrichment is materialized in the form of purchases, donations and works coming into public property in exchange for inheritance tax and with long term loans. Until 2011, when the Museum building will have been completed and will open its doors to the audience, the permanent collections are presented in periodical exhibitions which bring to the fore thematic or conceptual nuclei and artistic tendencies or periods. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.emst.gr

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