ἀπόλλυμαι [apóllūmai] at The Consulate General of Greece in New York

Art Writing Exhibition Greek Contemporary Artist

This past March, on the weeks surrounding Greek Independence Day, we were called in to install the first solo exhibition in New York of the artist Giorgos Taxidis that I curated. It was an immense honor and a great adventure. Below, I share more information, photos and a video of this show, that we are happy to announce, received positive reviews from media in New York as well as Athens! Scroll down for photos and our press release as well as a link to our online exhibition catalog!

Installation view, 2019. Photo by author.

Installation view, 2019. Photo by author.

Installation view, 2019. Photo by author.

PRESS RELEASE:

ἀπόλλυμαι [apóllūmai]
On view: March 19 – April 4, 2019

Works by Giorgos Taxidis
Curated by Tiffany M. Apostolou

Soil and memory. One is solid, natural, touchable, and the other utterly conceptual. Yet, both elements are intricately linked across many cultures, especially within those who have experienced uprooting of any sort. The first, tied to the idea of land, encompasses memory within its very core. It can simultaneously represent one’s roots, the container of one’s deceased, and the substance from which hope and newness sprout. The latter is something each person carries within them – a construct of the mind that can be experienced as vividly as reality, as vividly as soil. In this exhibition soil and memory come together in a combination of painting, drawing and installation, to evoke the innermost parts of the viewer’s psyche.

ἀπόλλυμαι [apóllūmai], used here in its passive form, references loss which, in turn, generates within a person, the need to fill the void of that or who is no longer there. Memory, in such cases, serves as a filler. Yet, the artist’s works presented in this exhibition also serve to connect viewers through discussing the very human experience of losing one’s self in memories, and therefore lead to hope for the new. A trigger as simple as a small portion of soil from one’s past home, or as complicated as the photo and passed-down story of a child’s funeral can render someone utterly lost in a memory even if it isn’t their own.

Giorgos Taxidis is an artist whose work evolves around the human as a whole being, as much as it evolves around art itself. Concerned with the inherent need to produce art, to map its role in the expression of self and communication of the other, Giorgos has produced a body of work including drawing, painting and installation, that approaches the human psyche deeply and powerfully – it is this work that has been gathered together in this exhibition. Through his and his family’s own past of uprooting and immigration, loss and hope, Giorgos traces the intrinsic effort to recall and remember found in all of us. His drawings’ visual planes are as complicated as memory itself. In parts, the image is fuzzy, like the lost data of an old film. And in others, like in the face of a child or background figure, the characteristics become sharp and more in-focus. Though drawn from the artist’s own past, the works are abstracted to the point where they communicate with the viewer independently of their initial roots. The artist’s intent is not to represent a specific story or point in time. Through such a process, he allows the viewers to recall and reflect their own histories and contemplate their own memory paths onto his work resulting in an immersive experience.

ἀπόλλυμαι [apóllūmai] will culminate with a monumental painting and powerful installation that will serve as centerpieces of this exhibition. The painting is rooted in an old photograph documenting the funeral of a child, an event liked to the artist’s own family in Pontus, one documenting an archaic tradition long gone for Greeks, this work is layered with questions. And with soil as a primary element, the installation will evoke not only one’s own memory of familial pasts, but those of their loved ones, who, in coming from a home-land to a new land, often held but few connections with their roots: some mud, an icon, and the ritual of the mnemosyno