Alphabet Games

ALPHABET GAMES

An exhibition at the European Patent Office

Alexandros Maganiotis

Dimitra Siaterli

INTRODUCTION

The European Patent Office is honoured to host for a month the work of Mrs Dimitra Siaterli and of Mr Alexandros Maganiotis. This special exhibition coming from Greece celebrates the fundamentals bricks of our work: the Alphabet.

If the scope of protection granted to the patents is made with those stones, artists coming from a major birth place of our European culture show us another game: with runes and hieroglyphs, the letters dance into a spiral: the evolution of the language is infinite. For now, we are invited to associate a zoomorphic figure to a letter, but what will come next ? Mrs Siaterli and Mr Maganiotis are helping us to continue to build the puzzle.

I hope that you will enjoy this exhibition organised by the Amicale. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank, in alphabetic order, P. LavÊant and C. Lefèvre for their work in organising it.

G. Minnoye, Vice-President

Alphabet Games

With this exhibition by two established Greek artists, Dimitra Siaterli and Alexandros Maganiotis, art aspires to once again becomes extrovert and communicative, to speak out with its own voice, depicting a broadened visual and intellectuall universe that follows a central axis with the theme of the alphabet.

In much of her work, defined by herself as “visual glossaries (or vocabularies), Dimitra Siaterli creates interactive relationships between images and letters, and at the same time presents a kind of classification system, a way of recording images that follow the logic and the articulation of language. A unifying line runs throughout her printed works with different variations on the same theme, words, phrases and meanings are illustrated: microcosms, small and concentric, animals and plants, shrubs and spider webs, figures in a state of suspension, wood chips and letter-prints on fabric forming word sets, thoughts and confessions, alphabets and manbugs - bizarre hybrids, something in between man, animal and elf. Each project functions as a peculiar hieroglyphic text, which provides a key to a code that leads to further connections and references beyond mere representation, by delving and decrypting a hidden meaning.

The alphabet depicted as a Phaistos Disk, both in the printed version (shown in the exhibition) as well as in the installation with the engraved

print-blocks forming a free-standing puzzle, is an emblematic composition. Its starting point is the first-primitive alphabets but it ends up in creating a contemporary one, demonstrating the continuity and evolution of language. The way the composition is arranged refers not only to the Phaistos Disk but also to a spider web.

With a rigorous manner and personal engagement, discipline, emotion and vital concern, Dimitra Siaterli articulates speech ‘logos’ with images, transforms experience into expressive entities. She confesses in a poetic way her attempts to grasp the feeling of dead end, Siaterli refers to the complexity of our existence, the social structures, the engagements and the disorders of contemporary man, as well as exploring notions such as communication and alienation, resistance and transition. Siaterli does not accomplish this in a narrative manner, but structurally and internally through her artistic writing, examining and re-discovering the essence of simple things – their truth and emotion creating a single interface, original, imaginative and suggestive, but at the same time, rich and full of content with connotations and multiple readings.

The compositions are imposed in the most direct and simple way, they constitute comprehensive statements and forms, which come to confirm the qualities and possibilities of her work, with its purity, poetry and vitality. These works represent

the artist’s vital relationship with the world that surrounds her, they are the essence of a process which is characterized by extensive research, persistent pursuit, knowledge, broad artistic education and constant experimentation with materials, techniques and technologies, ways and practices. The works are deeply rooted with core values, and approach critical issues, balanced between signifier and signified, speaking the timeless and universal language of symbols, raising questions and seeking answers, claiming more than the obvious and the trite.

The importance of the artwork as a linguisticdiscursive medium is reflected in the works, whether individual or in a series, of Alexandros Maganiotis. The main focus of his practice consists of an exploration of the boundaries between image, speech and text and their interactive and mutually complementary relationship. His intention to research this subject matter is evident in the Alphabet series (a set of 24 drawings, one for every letter of the Greek alphabet) where words are written but also their meaning is illustrated with an image, animals or flowers that grow out of human figures.

The outline and the forms of these figures are created with single dots that are drawn with colour markers on semi-transparent film, while in the background lies a print-out of the artist’s primary school certificate – a reference to personal memories but also an indirect comment

on the education process; school as a learning organization that provides knowledge and socialization. In the gallery the works are placed next to each other forming a linear presentation like a frieze. Their interrelations establish a multilayered pictorial narrative on the borderline between “normal”, “extravagant” and “ambiguous” where an ironic, often sarcastic mood coexists with a spirit of catalytic surreal humour.

In Maganiotis work unexpected encounters and juxtapositions, beyond the natural order of things, play a game of connotations and permutations, transformations and disguises, zoomorphic figures (within the great literary and artistic tradition such as the rabbit who lures Alice in Wonderland in Louis Carroll’s novel or the eerie, enigmatic bird-people full of hermetic secrets in Max Ernst’s paintings), project our innermost fears, fantasies and obsessions, and thus generate a different condition of being.

In this body of work the figures adopt personas, to identify themselves, interact with the conventions and stereotypes imposed by contemporary society, adopt roles and behaviors in an unexpected context, suggesting an alternative perception of the world with all its contradictions, engagements, certainties and doubts.

The endless interplay between an image of the word and the word that the image represents, forms a web of multiple possibilities and

scenarios, summarizing the artist’s stand against commonly adopted principles. The constant questioning of the meaning words carry, defines a solid entity that addresses and is adressed, reveals and undermines, invites participation and redefines meaning and concept, thus attempting to investigate reality and identity on the level of the individual and the collective. These works

by Alexandros Maganiotis seek to broaden our vision, provoke and trap our gaze, form a mental apparatus with a new and original aesthetic alphabet of human life and its adventure.

In a third part to this exhibition, are the alphabets created by the students of the School of Fine Arts – Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts (University of West Macedonia) in Florina. Each student, with the guidance of their lecturer Dimitra Siaterli, made linocuts with letters from the Greek or Latin alphabet in two different ways - the first is an approach retaining the letter as a recognizable image, whilst the second methodology was to camouflage the original letter in their own design to a point of unrecognizability. The finished linocuts were then printed on strips of cotton and will be hung as banners on columns in the gallery space. The alphabet project works complimentary to both Siaterli and Maganiotis’ work in this exhibition.

Yannis Bolis Art Historian

Alexandros Maganiotis

Alexandros Maganiotis was born in Athens in 1972.

He studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens N.T.U.A. Completed postgraduate studies and received Master in Architectural Design (M.Arch) from “The Bartlett” Faculty of the Built Environment, U.C.L. London As a visual artist he had four solo exhibitions and took part forty group shows in Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Japan, Russia, Turkey, UK and USA. Works of his are included in the Collection of the American College of Greece (ACG), Freud’s Dream Museum in St. Petersburg, Chania Municipal Gallery, A&L Katakouzenos House Museum, Lafcadio Hearn’s Memorial Museum in Japan and other private collections.

He currently lives and works in Athens, Greece. www.alexmaganiotis.com/

The Alphabet

from Alpha to Omega 24 drawings 42x30cm

Andenken-190x120cm

Gemeinsam-190x120cm

“Cat” - 190x90cm - 2012

“Dog” 190x90cm 2012

Dimitra Siaterli

Dimitra Siaterli was born in Argos (Greece) in 1952. She studied painting and interior design in Bologna (Academy of Fine Arts). She works as an artist in all of Visual Arts.

In 1977 together with Pino Pandoflini they found “Athens Printmaking Center” an organization that works together with artists & cultural foundations for publishing, printing, running workshops, seminars and arranging printing exhibitions. Her activity also focuses on visual interventions both in private and public spaces or happenings that combine other forms of art.

Ekkentra, Elliptical Worlds, Detail

Since 1975 she has shown her work in 30 solo shows and in group shows in Greece and abroad.

A member of the Artist Chamber of Greece and a founding member of the “Group of Printmaking Center”, the union of greek group “En Flo”.

Works are included in Greek and International collections and museums.

Since 2010 she teaches as a specialized professor at the school of Fine Arts in Florina (University of West Macedonia) www.dimitrasiaterli.gr dimitrasiaterli@hotmail.com

Gnomi Scarabegnomi

ekkentra, etching 2013, 80x57

worlds - glossaries, etchings 2014, 80x57

the big puzzle, printing letters engraved on wood, 2010

alphabets like festos disk , woodcut print, 110Χ165 cm

stand by exercises, etching, 70x100

stand by exercises, etching, 100x70

monoprint on paper, 100x70

monoprint on paper ,70x100

woodcut, prints on paper ,76x56

woodcut , prints on paper ,76x56

woodcut , prints on paper ,76x56

woodcut , prints on paper ,76x56

woodcut , prints on paper ,76x56

cobweb alphabets, set of twenty small etchings

Alphabet Letters, Student Names

Arabatzis Konstantinos, Athanassopoulou Michaela, Daskalou Zoe, Divari Alkyoni, Evaggeliou Rachioti Ariadni, Lagou Maria, Lianou Marietta, Nalbadidou Aggelina, Nikolaidi Leda, Mavrodoglou Valentini, Mpourma Vasso, Kalogeri Vassiliki, Kalognomis Vassilis, Karoulia Katerina, Kontou Georgia, Kotzaoglanidou Emilia, Koutroubi Danai, Kouzouni Assimina, Panteli Anastassia, Papadakis Michalis, Papadopoulou Aggeliki, Robolas Giannis, Santoussi Afroditi, Tassoula Maria, Tsoumani Aggelina, Zafeiri Marigo, Zafeiriou Rafaela, Zacharopoulos Odysseas, Zelilidi Chryssanthi, Vita Rallou, Vlachogianni Sophia

alphabet letters, linocuts by students of Shool of Fine Art of FLORINA , U.O.W.M.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank particularly the VicePresident Mr G. Minnoye and the External Communication Department for their trust and their vision into an artistic EPO in The Hague.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the involvement of the Chairman of the Amicale, Mr Pierre LavÊant and of Mrs Colette Lefèvre. We are also very grateful to our colleagues from the infrastructure and facility management for their support and to Mrs Maria Siaterli and to Mr Konstantinos Tzimeas for bringing those artists to us. May also be Mrs Jacqueline Joray be thanked for her active interface.

Our special thanks goes to Mr Randy van den Berg who designed this catalogue.