The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens Shows New Work by George Hadjimichalis

Written by Theofanis Athanasiadis Sunday, 20 November 2011 00:41

Athens, Greece -  The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens is pleased to present " George Hadjimichalis . The Painter A.K - A Novel", on view through February 5th 2012, The exhibition features new work by George Hadjimichalis specially commissioned by the museum and Bombay Sapphire Gin. George Hadjimichalis’ new project, is an installation that consists of 265 small and medium-sized paintings, 27 photographs, a structure and a video, which comprise the retrospective exhibition of an imaginary painter. Adopting the practice of a novelist, Hadjimichalis envisions a fictional person and creates his artwork, telling a story. It is a work open to multiple readings and includes a plethora of references and correlations. In this work, Hadjimichalis connects the personal to the collective, the experiential to fantasy, fiction to reality, identity to otherness, and the self to the Other.

The work also contains an underlying autobiographical element, as the life of the imaginary painter inevitably meets that of the novel’s creator. Engaging in a form of retrospective narrative interspersed with autobiographical elements, Hadjimichalis explores subjects such as the human body and spirit, illness, loss, psychosis and mortality. The title of the project and, by extension, the title of the exhibition, is, in essence, the information given about a book. George Hadjimichalis is the author, the painter A.K. its title, and the type of the book is a novel. It clearly concerns a visual novel, which isn’t written in words but images, mostly painted but also photographic and moving (video), which took approximately four years to make.

Through A.K.’s psychological state, Hadjimichalis tells us, indirectly, about his own story, his own journey through art, his own thoughts, desires, needs, phobias and preoccupations, revealing secret moments from his own life. A quest for the self through the Other, as well as of the self as the Other, is ultimately the raison d'être of the entire project. George Hadjimichalis was born in Athens in 1954. He studied painting in Saint Martin’s School of Art in London.

His first solo show took place at Gallery Ora in 1977, and since then he has been exhibiting regularly. In 2001, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens held a major exhibition of his work entitled 'George Hadjimichalis, Works 1985 – 2000'. In 2002 MoMA/PS1 organised an exhibition entitled 'George Hadjimichalis, Seven Works (1990-2000)' in New York. In 2005, Hadjimichalis represented Greece in the Venice Biennale . George Hadjimichalis has taken part in many important exhibitions, among them are: DOCUMENTA 9, Kassel, 1992 / The Theoretical Object, Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain of Brittany, 1993 / G. Tsarouchis, S. Antonakos, G. Hadjimichalis, Schirn Kunsthalle , Frankfurt, 2001 / Transcultures, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, 2004 / Ideal City-Invisible Cities, European Art Projects in several public spaces in Poland and Germany, 2006 / The Decade of the 80s, A Topology, Museum Serralves , Porto, 2006 / The First Image, Centre Regional d’Art Contemporain , Sete, France, 2009. His most recent show entitled 'Three Works' took place at Batagianni Gallery in Athens in 2010. Among other private and public collections, works by Hadjimichalis can be found in the Van Abbemuseum , Eindhoven, Holland, at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens and at the Jerry.I.Speyer collection in New York.


The National Museum of Contemporary Art began its operation in 2000. Its foundation came about in order 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 and namely of mostly critical and experimental character, even without premises or collections, was dictated by exactly this need. Exhibitions of contemporary art were taking and still take place in Athens. But the responsibility of the Museum, which equally sets in the centre of its activities both works of art and the public, is not to act circumstantially but based on a organized plan that is being realized from exhibition to exhibition and aims at awakening sensitivities and formulate critical thought and aesthetic criteria: there are no museums without audiences. Still, there are no museums without collections. With the ambition that until 2011, when the reconstruction of the former Fix brewery which will be the permanent premises of EMST will have been completed, a remarkable nucleus of works of art by Greek and international artists will have been developed, they are composing collections of selective rather than encyclopaedic character, which promote advanced tendencies and critical explorations of the artistic present but also its historical depths which reach as far as the second half of the 20th century. The museum's goal, both by exhibitions and collections, is to offer all the Museum's visitors, which remains an unreservedly democratic institution, the "other" dimension which in our time cannot be conceived outside transcultural and ecumenical patterns. Visit the museum's website at .... http://www.emst.gr

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