Aristides Logothetis: Curated by William Fagaly

ARISTIDES LOGOTHETIS Speculative Grammar

CUE ART JrOUNDATION

ARISTIDES LOGOTHETIS Speculative Grammar 12.03.2003 -1.24.2004

Curated by William Fagaly

THIS EXHIBITION WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY

HOLLAND & KNIGHT

FORWARD

We are honored to host this exhibition, which has been generously curated by William Fagaly. Mr. Fagaly, until 2001 the Assistant Director for Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art (with additional curatorial responsibilities for Ethnographic and Contemporary American Self-Taught Art), has chosen Greek-born artist Aristides Logothetis. Mr. Logothetis graduated from the University of New Orleans before moving to New York in 2002. Mr. Fagaly's appreciation of Mr. Logothetis' work demonstrates how the Foundation's discretionary process encourages a diverse and inclusive selection.

CUE is pleased to offer Mr. Logothetis his first solo New York exhibition, and is furthermore honored to have Mr. Logothetis involved in its studio residency and educational programs.

CURATOR'S STAT EM ENT William Fagaly

The process in making art has been paramount to Aristides Logothetis' work from the beginning. As a young boy growing up in Athens. Greece. his parents would ask him to "read" their fortunes from their empty coffee cups. "After they would finish their Greek (or Turkish. or Arabic) coffee, they would turn their little demitasse cups over and let the thick grinds slowly drip down the sides. I would then look into the intricate patterns and proceed to interpret them. This had, in retrospect. a profound effect on me, as I learned to look into abstract images and search for meaning." Years later, that experience informed the "coffee drawings," an ongoing series of abstract compositions employing coffee and thinned water soluble paints mixed with organic matter normally found in the kitchen (onions, spaghetti) and "cooked" on a stove top. " After the family emigrated to the United States when Logothetis was ten years old, and undoubtedly stemming from his parents' successful artistic vocations (his mother a tailor and seamstress, his father a musician and performer). Logothetis' own creative energies evidenced themselves in diverse forms while never deviating from his pursuit as a visual artist. Before his college years, he immersed himself in punk culture and founded and served as director of a popular alternative space, Gallery Schmallery in Boston, introducing new talent in the early 1990s.

Today process continues to dictate Logothetis' art, as does experimentation with materials. In the paintings, a distillation of formal elements-line and dots and a prescribed color palette-allows more freedom for the process to govern the work, determining how the image will be perceived, and what it will convey. Using acrylics with liquid mediums placed (dripped, poured, run) layer upon layer on a panel surface to achieve a wax-like matte surface, the cumulative image reflects a physical environment. a character. The separation between a uniform ground and the built up imagery varies among the paintings from unambiguous to nonexistent. while the space between layers is suggestive. Ambiguity supports reading the images struc­ turally as a universal macrocosm or as a microcosm of matters' building blocks.

The sculptures inhabit walls. floor. ceiling, pedestals and. like the paintings, are metaphorically referential. Through the choice of materials-tennis balls (spheres or dots). neckties and Madras plaid Bermuda shorts (a visual ordering of color and lines in a grid)-and their interaction, Logothetis mocks the American preppy and bourgeois society in which he found himself, while humor manifests itself in the absurdity of the object, its inherent gesture. An undercurrent of eroticism with suggestions of body parts and fluids often permeates the work. Protein playfully suggests a male sensuality as well as a DNA/biomorphic molecular strand. Utilizing commonly recognizable objects with certain societal references. this readymade a

character reinforces his intent "to celebrate the act of transformation, to affirm that ideas can elevate. and to force perception on different levels."

ARTIST'S STATEMENT Speculative Grammar

I am part of a diaspora. I navigate different longings. I want to assimilate, to rebel, to absorb, to release. Of course these dichotomies are facile and exemplary of the strictures of language, rather than the true multiplicities of experience. It is these multi­ plicities that are most interesting to me because they offer a more real representation of the events in our perception.

While my Greek ethnicity informs my fascination with the structure of Anglo­ American class and culture (including the regulation of race), my gender experience informs my fascination with identity constructs from fashion, to color, to "taste", as well as the organization and codes of power. sex, and control. In addition. the constant ch�nges in science and technology elicit in me feelings of wonder and concern.

I explore these detail-oriented investigations through my art making process.

The contradictions and structural errors of society's systems are major sources of inspiration for me. I find that these paradigms are often tenuous despite their seeming dominance. The absurdity of daily experience, my wariness of hierarchies, and my general aversion to didactic narrative, have lead me to metaphoric abstraction. The ensuing narrative, composed of mostly essential imagery, dots and lines for example, and its origination from process, reflects my interest not in specificity and oration, but rather in exploration and possibility. Still, I often work with non-art and found materials expressly for the varied metaphors inherent in them. By embracing notions that are seemingly ambiguous, whether manifested in a single artwork or extracted from a body of work, the process of observation will be enriched and perhaps revised. Specifi­ cally, I encourage the viewer of my work to visualize alternatives to hierarchies and constructs in terms of color and perspective and also in terms of socialized ideas.

PROTEIN Fabric. foam, cement, steel and wood, 82" X 60" X 22", 2003

BODICE BACK Acrylic and mixed media on wood, 48" X 48", 2001

BLORB Fabric and tenn¡s balls, 8" x 8.5'' x 7", 2000

FORT GEORGE TEN Acrylic on wood. 20" x 20". 2002

TABLA BUBBLY

Acrylic. fabric. pattern on wood.

84" X 48", 2001

CORPORATION

Fabric and foam, 10" x 72" x 22", 2002

THE SUPRISE OF THE MILLENNIUM Fabric, foam and found objects, 16.5" X 13" X 9", 2001

FORT GEORGE SIX Acrylic on wood. 20"

x

20", 2002

FABRIQUE EN LA NOUVELLE ORLEANS Fabr c and foam, 106" x 30"x 36", 2001

ARTIST'S

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Athens, Greece in 1967, Aristides Logothetis completed his BFA from Tufts University & the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA in 1996 and then graduated with an MFA from the University of New Orleans, LA in 2001 where he was a Fellow. He was resident artist at the Schloss Buchsenhausen in Innsbruck, Austria in 2001 and in Fort George, Annotto Bay, Jamaica in 2002.

In 2001, Logothetis had a solo exhibition titled Meta-Perceptions that traveled to the Brown Gallery at Duke University, Durham, NC, the Fine Arts Gallery at the University of New Orleans, LA and the Kenyon Gallery at the Schoolhouse Center for Art and Design, Provincetown, MA. He has also participated in group shows at Galerie Im Andechshof, Stadt Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria (2001), Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA (2001), Bing Bang at the Isaac Delgado Community College, New Orleans, LA (2001) and The Next Wave at the Southeastern Louisana University in Hammond, LA (1999) .

CURATOR'S

BIOGRAPHY

William A. Fagaly was the Assistant Director for Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art with additional curatorial responsibilities for Ethnographic and Contemporary American Self-Taught Art before retiring in 2001. In 2002 he was Curator of Art at the University Museum, University of Louisiana at Lafayette for one year. During his 37 year tenure with NOMA, Mr. Fagaly organized over 75 exhibitions, including the

New Orleans Triennial (1967-2001), the 41st Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (1989), and Roots of American Jazz: African Musical Instruments from New Orleans Collections (1995).

Mr. Fagaly has also been invited to curate a variety of exhibitions by other institutions, including the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, the Museum of American Folk Art, New York, and the Portland Museum of Art, Oregon. In 2004, he will serve as a guest curator for a major retrospective of Louisiana African-American self-taught artist Sister Gertrude Morgan at the American Folk Art Museum, New York and will also co-curate an exhibition of African Art at the Museum for African Art, New York.

CUE ART FOUNDATION MISSION STATEMENT

CUE Art Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides deserving artists

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chelsea gallery district. the Foundation's 2,000 sq.ft. ground floor exhibition

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from around the country an opportunity for solo exhibition. Located in New York's space affords these artists professional exposure comparable to that offered by

neighboring commercial galleries. without the usual financial restraints. CUE does not promote a particular school of artistic thought or practice; rather. the criteria

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Thomas K. Y. Hsu Brian D. Starer

for selection have been devised with the sole purpose in mind of exhibiting work

ADVISORY COUNCIL

received minimal exposure in New York in the last ten years.

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by artists who have not had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue. or have

At the core of CUE's mission is the determination to foster an agenda-free

program of twelve exhibiting artists a year. each handpicked by a single curator.

An on-site artist-in-residence program offers selected artists studio space in which

to produce or finish work for their exhibition at CUE.

The responsibility to choose qualified individuals from the visual arts and

beyond to act as exhibition curators rests with CUE's Advisory Council. an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts education. applied arts. art

history, and literary communities. The curators. in turn. will play a role throughout the exhibition process. helping the artist catalogue his or her work for exhibition. and participating in gallery lectures and programs.

Educational initiatives in the form of public programs and artists' dialogues

will take advantage of the diverse community that participates in CUE's gallery and studio programming. Foundation internships and stipends will help prepare the

next generation of artists and art educators by providing practical working knowledge of the art making and exhibition process.

ALL ARTWORK ;!:, ARISTIDES LOGOTHETIS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ABIGAIL POPE: COVER. PAGES 7,10.12,15,18: GLADE BILBY: PAGES 8.9,11,13,14,16 CATALOG DESIGNED BY SPECK, BROOKLYN, NY PRINTED IN CANADA

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