The Quarantine Exhibition - Space52 by space52

Quarantine Exhibition

Space52 was founded by the artist Dionisis Christofilogiannis in 2017 and supports Athens based artists and continuously seeks collaborations with art spaces and professionals from abroad. Our community and network grow by facilitating collaborations, exchanges, and research-based projects. Space52 serves as a hub for local and international creatives, intellectuals and theoreticians. The main focus of all our engagements is the current inquiries of our growing dynamic community. Space52 is an Athens incubator of ideas and experimentations.

Solidarity

“Quarantine Exhibition” is a virtual exhibition during fragile times. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to change our lives significantly day after day. Despite the current crisis, art is demonstrating its force. In April, after lockdown measures were put in place around the world, our immediate impulse was to bring together artists, friends, peers and professionals from any geographic location, with no limits on age, nationality, or career stage, through the format of a truly open, open call. The artists were motivated to submit a statement and an artwork in any medium of their choice, transmitting their immediate impressions during quarantine. With a total of 445 submissions, the open call shifted into a plethora of voices and impulses, as well as a cartography of the global sentiment. With a variety of strong and compelling works, the selection process became simultaneously exciting and challenging. Space52 and the selection committee have selected 60 artists that will be included in the exhibition. Selected international artists are invited to engage in a series of online exhibitions, eventually staging a gallery exhibition. Paying tribute to the solidarity shown by artists and institutions, at a time when art is suffering fully from the effects of a global, economic and social crisis, it became apparent to us that this time of confinement could also become a period of openness through culture. It is the right moment to strengthen the links between artistic creation and society. As the challenges we are living require far-reaching cultural policies, it will be necessary to listen to the voices

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of artists worlds in all their diversity. An exceptional international committee voluntarily selected the artists: Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Independent Contemporary Art Curator, Professor in Art History, based in Athens, Greece, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Visual Artist and Professor at the American College of Greece, Founder of Space52 based in Athens, Greece, Lydia Pribisova, Curator and an Art Historian, Managing Editor for Flash Art Czech & Slovak Edition, based in Bratislava and Nicolas Vamvouklis, Visual artist and Curator, Director of K-Gold Temporary Gallery and Curator at Galleria delle Prigioni, based in Venice. The selected artists are: Federico Alcaro, Islam Allam, Silvia Arenas and Guillem S. Arquer, Fotios Balas, Xaris Baskozos, Guilherme Bergamini, Emmanouil Bitsakis, Vince Briffa, Heimir Björgulfsson, Jacobo Bugarin, Chris Capten, Pelle Cass, Othonas Charalambous, Christina Chatziantoniou, Katerina Christidi, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, DURA, Hannes Egger, Kim Engelen, Sergio Femar, Francesca Fini, Caspar de Gelmini, Eleonora Geortsiaki, Prodromos Haralampidis, Hugo Houayek, Maria Ikonomopoulou, Ids_art.drone. projects, Nikomachi Karakostanoglou, Stelios Karamanolis, Panagiotis Karambambas, Akis Karanos, Emilia Kina, Giorgos Kontis, Georgia Kotretsos, Antonis Larios, Quentin Lefranc, Ugo Li, lom-of-LaMa, Alex Lysakowski, Pantelis Vitaliotis Magneto, Nikoς Mainaris, Andreas Mallouris, Zhang Miranda, Eva Mitala, Melina Fakitsa Mosland, Yuto Nemoto, Nocera&Ferri,

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Andrei Nutu, Ilias Papailiakis, Andreas Papamichael, Dionisiοs Pappas, Dan Perjovschi, Lea Petrou, Miquel Ponce, John Sachpazis, Georgia Sagri, Sissy Schneider, Octavi Serra, Christina Sgouromiti, George Stamatakis, Adonis Stoantzikis, Sebastian Sochan, Anne Cecile Surga, Giorgos Tserionis, Vickie Vainionpää. Wassili Wldmer.

scene and introduce the works of international artists to the broader Athenian public. The aim of the project is to underline the importance of collaboration, individual participation, and exchange between these different art scenes, suggesting new ways of working that embrace the values of exchange and hospitality during these difficult moments.

Despite the economic crisis the artist-run Space52 based in Athens finally organized a collective group project, based on the motivations of artists and curators without receiving any financial support.

I would first like to thank first all 445 participants of this call and special thanks to: Pantelis Vitaliotis Magneto for his time on making this wonderful catalogue, Nikos Larios and Charalampos Papadopoulos for their help in visualizing the online exhibition, Ariana Kalliga for text editing and her amazing ‘in-situ’ essay for the catalogue, in which she discusses emergent theoretical approaches through the works of these artists, and last but not least the great team of Space52 for realizing this project: Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Lydia Pribisova and Nikolas Vamvouklis.

The project intends to articulate and organize its potentialities in a series of online displays, to activate the public, artists, and collectors from all over the world, interested in the activities of artists during the current times. The project seeks to advocate for the local art

Thanks to our Media Partners: ARTICULATE, CULTURE NOW, INTERARTIVE, ΤΑ ΝΕΑ ΤΗΣ ΤΕΧΝΗΣ, KROMA MAGAZINE, OZON, UND.ATHENS

SPACE52’S ART IN QUARANTINE: THEORIZING AN ART OF THE PRESENT MOMENT By: Ariana Evelyn Kalliga

FOREWORD The lockdown in Athens, beginning on March 23rd, dealt a sudden blow to creative spaces and triggered a collective loss amongst art communities. Within the last three months, online exhibitions have proliferated. As Barbara A. MacAdam writes in her review of the recently opened show, ‘Petra Cortright: borderline aurora borealis,’ at Team Gallery, New York: While we may be unsure of how to evaluate an exhibition that we are not viewing in person—we’re looking at a gallery website and judging a two-dimensional presentation as if it were three-dimensional—we must mentally fill in the dimensions and build a possible alternative space for imaginings and responses(1) . Artists working in three dimensions find themselves without studio access, unable to mold, meld, and build. Faced with an abeyance of space, photographic witnesses step in as digital iterations of sculptures, installations, and live performances. Within this new atmosphere, the question arises not if artworks can but rather should they become virtual possibilities? In other words, should artists create a supplemental art? The artist-run Space52 gallery stages a show not of content but narrative: an array of responses to the current lockdown submitted by artists from all over the world. Each artwork is accompanied by a personal excerpt, which serves as an interstitial space of reflection. Collectively, their works speak to conditions of precarity, solitude, and joy, as well

as the practical accommodations that have generated new mediums and expressions. This article examines ways forward, questioning whether altogether new but compatible possibilities for the display and production of contemporary art are possible. I refer to spaces already allotted to us through fiction, archives, fetish, and duration, to try and theorize an art of the present moment. FICTIONS OF ART What ever happened to the art of Jason Taub, Marvin Blaine and Robert Dayton, the imaginary artists of Robert Morris’s 1971 Artforum essay, ‘The Art of Existence: Three Extra Visual Artists’ ? Artworks and artists can be pure fiction. In May 2019, Bary Shwabsky wrote about fictions of art, using the term thought experiments to carve out their function(2). Like characters in a story, artworks described but never seen nor touched, are useful mnemonics in an imaginary encounter. Shwabsky called attention to an historic lineage of art that has taken place outside of Art History, dreamt up by writers, artists, philosophers and poets alike, whose descriptions of hypothetical artwork still influence their readers. Examples abound. Virginia Woolf’s body of paintings form an archive in their own right. Such was her dependency on thought experiments that in Blue and Green, a Woolfian story about two colors, she resorted to complete abstraction. Thought experiments, as Shwabsky defines them,

(1) Barbara A. MacAdam, ‘Petra Cortright: borderline aurora borealis’, Brooklyn Rail (May 2020) https://brooklynrail.org/2020/05/artseen/ Petra-Cortright-borderline-aurora-borealis (2) Barry Shwabsky, ‘Fictions of Art’, Brooklyn Rail (May 2019) https://brooklynrail.org/2019/05/editorsmessage/Fictions-Of-Art

never intend to become physical artifacts. They carve out an imaginary space where experimentations, encounters, and viewing take place. The viewing conditions stirred by thought experiments recall Dalia Neis’s remark on the auratic effect of the absent painting in David Ruiz’s 1979 film, ‘The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting’, about which she observed: imagined scenarios become virtual possibilities, more real than their lived counterparts(3). Do thought experiments offer a way forward for artists of the present moment? Spanish artist Blanka MIro Skoody, walks inside the video background of a soft pencil drawing of her studio on grey paper. In her short animation video posted recently on her Instagram feed, she wears a magician’s hat and a brush, moves in slow, broken-up steps, towards her blank canvas on an easel. Unable to magically bring her art to life, she turns back on herself disappointedly, and sits at her imaginary desk, onto which lightly sketched scattered notes pronounce “Need $$$” and “DEAD INSIDE”. By inserting a motion video of herself into the flat plane of her drawing, Miro Skoody animates the impracticable conditions of art-making during the current moment of crisis. Just like Carolee Schneemann’s 1970 performance of her nude acrobatic leap, which constituted a drawing, Miro Skoody’s animated clip resists categorization, imaginatively portraying a canvas that, like a thought experiment, won’t materialize, and yet figures in-

side the descriptive realm of a very real artwork. “When there are fictitious artworks,” writes Shwabsky, “there can also be fictitious artists, fictitious galleries, critics, museums and collectors - entire fictitious art worlds”(4). Quentin Lefranc’s submission to the Space52 open call, through its scope, raises a fascinating point. Confined to his home in France, Lefranc focused his time on creating models of his sculptural installations. His submission, he writes, forms an exhibition in its own right, not a project for a group show. The entry of an exhibition in this collective show would otherwise be inconceivable without the ability to imaginatively fit in an artwork of this scale in the middle of 66 other works. While thought experiments question the very purpose of visiting a gallery or website to see art, keeping the scope of these works imaginatively open-ended, by performing descriptive leaps between formats and intent, can help artists working in quarantine overcome the challenge of translating space. ELBOW ROOM: ARCHIVES Quarantine is an accidental residency, writes Othonas Charalambous. Personal archives are often born out of an urge to taxonomize a nested digital or physical environment that aids the retrieval of visual and material data. Faced with art supply

(3) Dalia Neis, ‘The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting’, Brooklyn Rail (May 2019) https://brooklynrail.org/2019/05/criticspage/The-Hypothesis-of-the-Stolen-Painting (4) Barry Shwabsky, ‘Fictions of Art’

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store closures and home confinement, artists turn to look at their own work as a source of imaginative re-invention. Artist archives in quarantine are functionally ambiguous spaces, databases of visual images or piles of physical ephemera, out of which new work is generated. Galician artist Jacobo Bugarin typically works with installations and entire rooms that are structurally re-adapted and altered. Here, his work, It all sounded so much more solemn in Latin , is sourced from his existing photo archive of bodies in motion. I can only review my image file of bodies, skin and affection, studied poses or ways to hide, he writes. Artist Kim Engelen, on the other hand, has reactivated an old image database project. Her series Sun-Penetrations documents the experience of sun slits piercing a corner or facet of a room. Engelen is currently cataloguing her vast collection and sending one picture out into the world daily during the first 40-days of quarantine. Capitalizing on the existence of visual storehouses, Bugarin and Engelen repurpose visual content that comments on the confines of lockdown. Bugarin’s work is hard to view without linking it to our present inability to interact as sensual and affectionate bodies. Conversely, Engelen’s Sun Penetrations have a meditative effect. The simplicity of each daily permutation exposes the thin line between a feeling of complete stasis and our consciousness of the passing of time. In their article, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory”, Joan M. Shwarz and Terry Cook claim that archives validate our expe-

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riences, our perceptions, our narratives, our stories. Archives are our memories. Yet what goes on in the archives remains remarkably unknown(5) . When artists use their portfolio of existing work as source-material, their choices form critical nodes, entry-points into new works through the context of the author’s appraisal. Informal archives, formed out of scraps and ephemera lying at home, have offered themselves up as art materials. Working from his home in Thessaloniki, Fotios Ballas has begun looking through his collection of art and fashion magazines. THE BORING MONSTER, is a collage of a human bust made of cut-outs of manicured hands, insect species and ears adorned with diamonds. The composition’s sole text additions marvel at us with irony, as the greek phrase ΕΙΜΑΣΤΕ ΕΝΑ (We are One) sits on top of the word LIE . Stored fabric becomes another source for artmaking. Based in London, Sebastian Stochan was able to get a hold of his tufting equipment before the lockdown. In what he calls a current descaling process, he spends his time perfecting the warp and weft of textiles. Instead of buildable structures, he has submitted 12 small rugs with pastel colours, minimal blotches and shapes, documenting them on pavements during his daily walks. Similarly, Athens-based artist Othonas Charalambous, forges paths that can only be supported based on what is already available within his own studio . His sculptures, sewn out of faux leather, have gradually begun moving away from the wall, to embrace

(5) Shwarz, J., Cook,T. (2002), Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory, Archival Science 2, p.18

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three dimensionality. Photographed and then digitally reproduced, these textile works initiate a conversation on the inherent similarities between woven and digital fabric. The metaphor of the archive as offering elbow room for artists to keep inventing, purposely adds a layer of record-keeping authority to these improvisations. Examining what lies in digital and domestic stores is an exercise in selectivity. Grouped together, these artists draw attention to what they have chosen to keep and retrieve after studios and art stores are long shuttered. FETISH In his book, Fetish: Literature, Cinema, Visual Art (2017) , Italian art historian and philologist, Massimo Fusillo, moves away from the early history of the fetish tied to the colonial trade of votive objects and modern psychoanalytic theory, seeing the fetish as an all-encompassing artistic device used across artistic, literary, and philosophic traditions. According to Fusillo, fetishes represent a speculative leap from desiring to beholding. In works of art and fiction, we typically encounter the fetish as a narration through objects(6), endowed with an excess of meaning, invested with affections, symbols, memories and illusions(7) . This encounter always belies a theatrical element, since fetishes are transformed from their original contexts, collected privately, or reified as icons, all forms of performance(8) . Unsurprisingly, fetishization forms a frequent institutional critique of museums, where frames, black boxes, vitrines and white spaces

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typically isolate - helping objects “perform” -, and consummating their official status as Art. Confined to their homes, artists play with the symbolic potentialities of objects as embodiments of desire and Art, inventing new frames for artworks to perform with. Left alone, some artists turn reflections inward to an interiority that becomes “thingly”. THE VIRTUAL FETISH Marie Lynn Speckert’s submitted piece, COVIDBoyfriend, narrates her story of absence and desire. In the midst of isolation, Speckert relays: First thing that came to my mind was to have just one person who spends time with me. Springtime has also affected me, of course. This romantic idea, a love story during the quarantine, was one of the fundamentals for my new project. According to Speckert, COVID-Boyfriend is athletic, huggable and likes to wrestle. Working in her studio in Halle, Germany, Speckert constructed him out of materials lying at hand. Consisting of a sewn black leather body, on which a screen tenuously rests as a head with a projection of a 3D animation, the COVID-Boyfriend is a hybrid object. We are introduced to him through two short amateur video recordings, which show him either enjoying the fresh air on a lounge-chair in the sun, or in a physical embrace with the artist. Speckert’s practice of combining 3D programming with installation work and sculpture, have prompted her to ask whether her work has the potential to become real. Turning to her latest invention, she asks: How can a virtual person and an object really participate in your life? How can this created world

(6) Fusillo, Massimo, Fetish: Literature, Cinema, Visual Art (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), p.7 (7) Fusillo, p.14 (8) Fusillo, p.76

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become authentic? Inculcating the terms of our own confinement, the allure of a fantasy companion with a set of desired character traits is infinitely relatable. Writing in Real Virtuality: About the Destruction and Multiplication of World (2014), Ulrich Gehmann claims: In virtual reality, space becomes a metaphor not of but for the world(9) COVID-Boyfriend acts as a metaphor for a world mediated by increasingly remote connections, in a complex yet immediate way. Stemming from her private fetish of companionship, Speckert and the COVID-Boyfriend can’t help but read like a convincing love story of the current moment, and our short glimpse of it, through a vimeo video clip, suits a world attuned to the brief imprint of social media stories. Thanks to its iterative structure and display, Speckert’s work is also highly reflexive. A virtual appendage is joined with an inviting and ductile material body, then recorded in a video clip, and viewed on our individual computer screens. COVID-Boyfriend, translates an artist’s private fantasy into a public web fantasy, and will eventually do so in the space of a gallery. This virtual-to-physical cycle serves as an apt metaphor for the collapse of real and virtual boundaries, and Speckert deftly shows us how quickly our understanding of what is real, and how we relate to it, can expand and contract. FETISH, DOMESTIC, INTERIOR Objects of everyday life, stripped of their commodity value, are transferred to fetishes. They are assemblages charged with the tutelary power of my own vulnerability, writes artist Christine Sgouromiti.

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Cloistered at home, artists have begun taking a sharp aesthetic interest in their surroundings. Octavi Serra creates small interventions in his home in Barcelona from the objects in his 100m2 apartment. Covid series, llibres, is a human figure formed out of vertically stacked books propped against a wall next to a plant cut-off by the photograph frame. In cadirasofa , a Matteo Grassi black leather chair, now sits on top of a faded brown sofa, a substitute for Serra’s absent roommate, and in Caballet , a tall lyre easel has acquired feet. Serra’s Covid Series , constitutes a series of photographs that bear a marked absence of the institutional and political critique, which typically accompanies Serra’s photographic interventions. While invoking a history of readymades, from Duchamp to Christian Boltanski’s photographs of found objects, Serra’s work is not a provocative affront to the rules of museum collections. Instead of poking fun at art institutions, these photographs raise questions about the reach of artworks created and exhibited at home, and take stock of the current conditions of confinement through the playful act of artmaking, reflecting Serra’s own enjoyment of this time. Indeed, for some artists, this unfamiliar landscape represents a sorely needed time of reflection. Artist Pantelis Vitaliotis, based in Athens, describes the way he deleted obligations, deadlines, people and things , while in quarantine, indulging instead with greater concentration in his practice. Eleonora Georgitsiaki, quarantined in Ioannina, Greece, spent days reflecting on the shifting and novel feelings she was experiencing towards herself. She writes, as if I did not know me at all. I felt

(9) Ulrich Gehmann and Martin Reiche (eds), Real Virtuality: About the Destruction and Multiplication of World (transcript Verlag, 2014), p.10

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the need to not do or hear anything or anyone. The need of only hearing myself, my thoughts and my body. Her Untitled plaster casts are bodily hollows and sculptural indentations of the artist’s hands. Boundaries between art/ life dissolve in the intimacy of these objects, fleshy offsprings of the artist’s elusive interiority. HISTORICAL DURATION French historian Fernand Braudel coined the concept of la longue durée (the long duration) , to look at history not as a succession of periods and moments, but as a longer term interval of environmental and structural change. The unique constraints placed upon societies throughout history, determined by their geographical locations, population shifts, and climatic conditions, are the backdrops against which history unfolds(10) . According to Braudel, in order to grasp the long-term thrust of momentary events, such as this global pandemic, we must think in terms of long-term change on a global scale. This point is brought up by a number of artists in the exhibition, including Italian architect Federico Alcaro, and Icelandic LA-based artist Heimir Björgulfsson. In his written reflection, Venetian-based architect and artist, Federico Alcaro, underlines the way the present moment has brought to light an underlying crisis of social and environmental inequities. Alcaro writes about Venice as coming to a stop, as the usual traffic in the city’s streets and canals has given way to a sudden appearance of animals:

The once animated Pigeons now settle down in the middle of the calli (trans. streets) to rest a lit-

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tle under the spring sun. I stare at the canal and I notice the presence of a jellyfish that is calmly carried away by the calm current...The now dark water has remained unchanged, some small ripples given by the passage of a boat in the distance and then again in silence, even the algae seem to have noticed nothing. It’s late, I close the window... and wait for the next day to look out to find if the jellyfish has visited me again. Alcaro’s detailed description of Venice in lockdown parallels his compositional technique, in which precise reconfigurations of symbols and details create continuities with the city’s historical past. Referring to traveller’s illustrations found in 19th century encyclopedias and compendiums, Alcaro blends contemporary motifs and dissonant historic references, ranging from digital icons to embedded sculptures. In his work, Common Isolation , Alcaro positions the opening ceremony of this year’s Venice Carnival, Game, Love and Folly , which came to an abrupt pause, inside an historic print. Costumed figures dance against detailed elevations of Piazza San Marco, as transparent bubbles dart across the image, enclosing and documenting each jovial movement. While Alcaro places the isolation of the present moment on an historical plane, Heimir Björgulfsson uses layered assemblages, to examine how animal species endure the effects of urbanization and climate change . According to the artist, the consequences of mankind’s clash with nature are largely shaped by our cultural identities. The sensitive alignment between humans and the en-

(10) Tomich, D. (2011), The Order of Historical Time: The Longue Durée and Micro-History, Almanack 2, pp. 52-65: https://www.scielo.br/pdf/ alm/n2/en_2236-4633-alm-02-00038.pdf

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vironment is laid bare in his photo-collage, Sunshine ain’t no joke . Björgulfsson informs us that the background is a nondescript corner from Zzyzx Spa, located in California’s Mojave desert. The now infamous illegally-built enterprise, was once a promised utopia built by a businessman, who sold the fable many still buy into: that we can extract the seemingly impossible from nature for the sake of

Artists in this exhibition experiment with ways to mark time. Ruminative writings and artworks in confinement speak of a growing sense of asynchronicity, as artists writing across different time zones and places talk of time becoming condensed , lacking movement , and slowing down .

human consumption, even a miracle. The artist’s technique makes it hard to tear the image’s layers apart: thick overpaint enters a porous photograph, as neatly drawn animal and plant species rest in the overall province of aesthetic abstraction. Björgulfsson sees adaptation as a constant of nature and human life, which he claims can withstand the current pandemic. Light, colour, and movement, signs of natural adaptation and growth, are what remains after Björgulfsson is done layering his compositions.

sunday to discuss the time of her confinement. Christina Chatziantoniou dates her written reflection: This note was written on 21.04.2020, in Athens, Greece, at my boyfriend’s house . The urge to record and leave an indexical trace of time, seemingly confirming the growing distance between perceived and real time, becomes the artistic device of Lea Petrou’s work, 2802202030042020 . Using a date stamp to document the days between February 28th and the Space52 open call deadline, Petrou forms a total of 63 prints on a single napkin. Unable to return to work, she writes of her days in her flat in Chalandri, Athens, as acquiring an unknown rhythm, a feeling of time condensed and subjected for the first time to her own manipulations. Due to the successive stamping process, ink dissolved to form a uniform block of varying density on each of the napkin’s four sides. Petrou remarks: the piece became one structure, forming this set of time as an entirety.

PRIVATE DURATIONS What is there to do with this ongoingness of the present that neither pauses nor tires, this ceaselessness that’s like a blinding light flickering so rapidly that the naked eye cannot perceive its reverberations? The seconds are not divided, as a clock would have us believe; time does not tick, but is welded into a seamless progression… the present offers no options; it insists on our attention. It is relentless and knows that everything is contingent on it. The most casual turn, an innocent encounter - with a person, a book, a painting, a piece of unexpected news - or a mere thought passing through, can leave one ever so slightly al-

tered… Hisham

Matar,

One

Month

Siena

(2019)

Sissy Schneider uses the metaphor of an eternal

Eva Mitala and Miquel Ponce deploy a subtractive process to speak about time. Mitala places stencil cut-outs on public facing transparent glass panels, to reveal features of the distant Californian landscape. Mitala speaks of movements in the field,

not large movements but subtle movements . She claims, We sense time . Time is movemen t. In a

(11) Michael Connor, ‘Curating Online Exhibitions, Part 1: Performance, variability, objecthood’, Rhizome (May 13, 2020): https://rhizome.org/editorial/2020/may/13/curating-online-exhibitions-pt-1/

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lock down we don’t move. The condition we are in, slows down time. Miquel Ponce’s paintings are abstract montages of damaged colours scraped and thinned down. The associative poetics that spring up from his process, in which an abstract image becomes the residue of its own creation, sparks a dialogue which wants to talk about both our time and itself . Both of these works seem to suggest that the very structure of time is manipulated by space and movement.

with online audiences. The artworks collected in Space52’s online exhibition, resist definition, forming a repository of illustrated notes, softwaregenerated art, clips, performances, images, plans, drawings, and observations. One submission even managed to escape the limitations of confinement. Ids_art_drone_projects, by Charalampos Papadopoulos and Space52 founder Dionisis Christofilogi-

In the spirit of Braudel’s longue durée, Athensbased artist Georgia Sagri’s submitted essay, Death will not become another spectacle, cogently asks : Is [this crisis] simply a revelatory tool, revealing all that was already ill and malfunctioning in our society and routine?

Read in one go, the exhibition’s catalogue forms a journal of individual diary entries, in which the search for words becomes as important as the images that give voice to them. Applying pressure to specific themes emerging from these artworks and their texts, I have offered an initial glance at ways art of the present moment can activate our projective imaginations, perform archival selectivity, give form to domestic and private feelings, and comment on the sheer length of time, weighing in on history, and on our days.

CONCLU SION In a brilliantly insightful piece on Rhizome’s blog published this May, Michael Connor highlights the history of online exhibitions as a distinctive genre in their own right. The problem with online shows, claims Connor, rests in a tension that is kept alive through organizational structures that delineate online engagement from curation(11) Connor regards artist-conceived online exhibitions as having the potential to initiate an authentic engagement

annis, was formed out of sending drones to draw familiar symbols with light over the Attica night sky.

Ariana E. Kalliga, based between New York and Athens, writes on art, architecture and community practices. She has worked as research fellow for the Norman Foster Foundation, Madrid, MoMA’s Architecture and Design Department and the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik. Since 2018, she organizes community events and workshops in the East Village. She holds a degree from Oxford University’s Department of Art History.

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Federico Alcaro

In Venice, Italy, the situation is as surreal as it is intriguing. In a city lived by people from all over the world, 365 days a year, including holidays, it now seems uninhabited. Even the inhabitants are a little confused by this long breath of relief from the compact crowds of tourists and occasional visitors. The most crowded place moved from the various campi and campielli (squares) to the queues to enter the various supermarkets, transformed into temporary lounges to exchange some chat (always at a safe distance) and take some sun in waiting for his turn to enter to make food supplies. Appointment next week, same time, same place, same temporary lounge, and after a detached greeting (literally) back home to wait. I find myself at the window, the only one facing the outside world, looking around for something or someone. â&#x2020;&#x2019;

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Common Isolation, Collage of 19th century illustrations and photos illustrating critical d y s t o p i a s o f c o n t e m p o r a r y s o c i e t y.

Lost Connections, Collage of 19th century illustrations and photos illustrating critic a l d y s t o p i a s o f c o n t e m p o r a r y s o c i e t y.

The once animated Pigeons now settle down in the middle of the calli (trans. streets) to rest a little under the spring sun. I stare at the canal and I notice the presence of a jellyfish that is calmly carried away by the calm current. The clear water of the canals shows the muddy bottom once in constant movement, in an apparent calm waiting to be moved by some fish in search of food. So the day passes slowly and the moon appears from behind the silent buildings, a shadow behind an isolated window, surely someone who melancholy looks out and thinks â&#x20AC;&#x153;this would be the perfect time to give some attention to my city, walking through the calli and dwelling in some campo to breathe that atmosphere that only here I can findâ&#x20AC;&#x153; but i

resist this temptation, knowing that when all this is finished, fulfilling that desire will be the greatest gift. The now dark water has remained unchanged, some small ripples given by the passage of a boat in the distance and then again in silence, even the algae seem to have noticed nothing. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s late, I close the window and open another one towards the building next door to exchange two words with the neighbor and I realize that it is late because it is closing the shutters to let the children sleep, tired from the endless loop of running from the living room to the kitchen and vice versa. I close the window and wait for the next day to look out again and find out if the jellyfish has visited me again.

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Second Contact, Collage of 19th century illustrations and photos illustrating critical dystopias o f c o n t e m p o r a r y s o c i e t y.

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Islam Allam

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Ddigital work

Since I am not a fan of going out a lot, the conditions of the quarantine were not harsh to me, forcing me to do something. I stuck to the house and thought to spend my time on my project and I create digital portraits, harnessing the visual style, context, and approach similar to traditional painting. The visual content is always the strongest and easiest to

remember. I will make a portait daily - A 14 Day Quarantine- of a person from my Instagram list to remind him to stay at home and therefore he will always remember that during these critical days and his loved ones will always remembered also to stay at home.

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Silvia Arenas and Guillem S. Arquer

We are under quarantine in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.Last summer, we moved to Rotterdam together and we live in a floating house in the North of the city. Our experience of the quarantine is defined by our condition as Catalan expats living in the Netherlands and the clash between how the situation has developed in one country and the other. Spain is the second country with more confirmed cases of COVID-19 and a total lockdown of the population at their homes was ordained, taking the right of free movement from the citizens, they could just go outside to go to the supermarket and, some people, to work. We keep constant communication with our friends and families

to know about their daily struggle and luckily, up to now, no one from our close family or friends have been infected yet. We get informed about the outbreak in Spain by listening to the Catalan radio and digital media. We take the situation quite seriously and try to be outside home as less as possible, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t meet our friends, we wear gloves and DIY masks when we go to the supermarket, we remove our clothes, wash hands and face when we get home and disinfect the groceries before storing them.

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We try to keep our place as a safe space. It is in this transition from the private space into the public arena that we are faced with the contrast of the measures undertaken by the Dutch government (“intelligent” lockdown) and the loose attitude of Dutch people towards the virus. There are very few people wearing masks in the supermarkets and we experience explicit uneasiness in their gaze as they see us wearing them, as if we, somehow, embodied the virus itself. Having contact with the ones we love in Spain makes us aware of how privileged our personal situation is -we are going through this together as a couple (giving each other support in the other’s anxieties), we can go outside to do some exercise or just for a walk (in contrast to Spain), we can hang out in our garden (in contrast to people living in flats) and have this amazing overview of the canal- and to take very seriously our responsibility towards the most vulnerable collectives of our community. As a result of experiencing the “quarantine times” together, we have come up with “Hanging on the entrance door”, 2020 -after a long time without collaborating- as a reflection of how the shared experience of the outbreak of the COVID-19 has changed how we relate to the domestic space.

E x h i b i t i o n

H a n g i n g o n t h e e n t r a n c e d o o r, 5 3 x 6 5 x 8 c m . D I Y m a s k s ( W a terproof caps, duct tape and permanent ink on transparent ace t a t e s h e e t s ) , m e t a l g r i l l f o r d o o r w i n d o w, m e t a l c a r a b i n e r a n d b i cycle lock keys. The work is attached to the wall by four screws. The lower screws should be placed at a height of 136 cm from the f l o o r. T h e a r t w o r k w a s p r o d u c e d f r o m t h e 1 6 / 0 4 / 2 0 2 0 t o 2 9 / 0 4 / 2 0 2 0 .

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Fotios Balas

My name is Fotios Balas and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a visual artist from Greece. I spend most of my Quarantine time almost completely isolated in my hometown, Thessaloniki. I was never frightened by the virus itself, I was only scared of the amount of stupidity around the world. But I was kinda used to it even before the pandemic broke... At the beginning of it, I was sad, worried and confused mostly for others but after a while, I decided to focus on myself a little bit. I thought that period shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be a waste of time for me. I turned isolation into power. I quit watching the news, movies and Netflix , instead I began watching a huge amounts of

documentaries about art, fashion, forbidden history and things that matter to me. Each documentary is like a book. I was also spending a lot of time playing with my three nephews and their dog that live down floor. Although the last months I was kinda isolated too, I was working for two art exhibitions and two fashion shows, all of them canceled because of the pandemic, I became extremely creative. I began using any types of

THE BORING MONSTER (paper collage)

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ESUS (made of chocolate)

materials that were available to me. I was mostly using paper material from art and fashion magazines from my archive, because, unfortunately, the art supplies stores were all closed so the only thing I could be able to have was the basic school glue type from the supermarket. During the Orthodox Easter, I created a chocolate Jesus using a brush and it was eaten by my nephews. I also managed to rethink about many things in my life and I discovered some new ideas, projects and techniques which would be announced in the near future. Expressing myself through Art, it’s the only thing I have. I don’t know from where

it flows but somehow, for me it’s like breathing. It’s not just a profession, it a way of living...Besides, I feel really glad that many people support me in any ways. Even through social media. I was receiving a huge daily amount of messages from people telling me that I make their day or make them smile etc. Through that hard time, that was the best gift I could ever have. That’s magic and I want to thank everyone! We are officially into a new Era and things are going to change through this decade but, I am an optimistic by nature and I hope that this world will learn something from this and become wiser...

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P a p e r, o i l o n c a n v a s , 2 3 x 2 5 c m

Q u a r a n t i n e

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Xaris Baskozos

During the quarantine period I was living between my home, my studio and the roof which are in the same building. I also wandered around empty Athens and walked around my neighborhood which paradoxically was livelier than before. In the meanwhile, there was a chance to see in how shortly the worlds pollution problem can be solved, no production of unnecessary things, less unnecessary movement actually can lead to less noise, cleaner air, cleaner seas and more forests. Since the prohibition of unnecessary movement most people found the change of walk and exercise in the city which was before impossible to do from the noise, the traffic, and the pollution. Suddenly one can hear the sound of the birds and roads become meeting grounds for inhabitants. I took the chance to think and draw about the new situation. Here is one of my paintings I made entitled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Paperâ&#x20AC;?.

Guilherme Bergamini

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Stay at home, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a weak flu!

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Searching the Internet about the new COVID-19 around the world, I saw the website of the Ministry of Health of Brazil. I came across a list of 27 countries that are being monitored by the Federal Government. I listed these 27 countries cited in the news above, published on March 3, 2020, I searched in Google Street View at random and appropriated each photograph, covering the people in the image with red circles. This monitoring carried out by the Federal Government is contradictory for what I observe in the actions taken by the President of the Federative Republic of Brazil. What is at stake, if he understands it, are the lives of millions of Brazilians who survive each day with minimal wage or nothing, an unjustifiable and impractical social inequality. And in this conflict of vanities, interests and power, we can come to an unprecedented tragedy. I never imagined that i would live an experience of a pandemic and social confinement. From that I remember a passage from the inaugu-

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ration speech of the President-elect of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, on January 1, 2019, in Brasilia, in the Federal District, Brazil: â&#x20AC;&#x153;May God bless this great nation. Brazil above all. God above all.This is our flag, which will never be red. It will only be red if our blood is needed to keep it green and yellow.â&#x20AC;?

Stay at home, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a weak flu!

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Emmanouil Bitsakis

During the quarantine I am staying in my house and studio in the centre of Athens. As I cannot have a social life, I work more. My break is a walk to the nearby Lycabettus Hill. The Corona Virus lockdown is the only crisis to which I have easily adapted. This highlights a crucial problem rather than revealing flexibility. Making a living as an artist in Greece takes so much time that it is very difficult to have a balanced social and personal life.

Mozartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Insomnia_18X13cm_ acrylics on canvas

English Vacation_24X18cm_acrylics on canvas

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Vince Briffa

Reflecting on COVID19 confinement after Auschwitz

E x h i b i t i o n

My experience with COVID-19 lockdown in Malta I am originally from Malta where I have been in lockdown since the second week of March 2020. I normally spend my week in Malta and my weekends in the sister island Gozo, where I also have another studio. Lockdown for me has meant that, I had to stay put in one place, Malta, and forget my weekend or any other travel. As an academic my work increased exponentially, having to oversee the migration of all of my departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lectures to an online platform and dealing with academic and administrative matters remotely. After the third week of

lockdown however, things started to settle down and I have started to manage my time better, including finding more time for work in the studio and also to read and listen to music. We are now in our seventh week of lockdown (the week of the 27th April) and I am managing to do much more work both university related and in the studio. Although I never seem to distance myself from work, I am much calmer as I have managed to shed many unnecessary activity. I have more time to think and to be with my inner self and my family. I feel that I am truly a better person.

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Heimir BjĂśrgulfsson

I am interested in mankindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clash with nature, however subtle or absurd, and its unpredictable consequences. I examine how animal species adapt to changing habitats, and endure the effects of urbanization and climate change, and how our experiences with the natural versus the man-made are shaped by our cultural identities and character. I seek the awkwardness within such situations and the coincidental narratives that take shape. Through collage and assemblagebased works, I strive to initiate a dialogue with the viewer and introduce more questions than answers. I am not after any solution, solely the questions raised. I am originally from Iceland, I live and work in Los Angeles, California. I am lucky that my studio is behind my house, so I have access to it during the quarantine. Although it was quite hard to focus in there after the initial lockdown,

E x h i b i t i o n

’Sunshine ain’t no joke’ photograph and hand-made paper on photograph collage 40 cm x 30 cm

too distracted by current events, but like we humans are capable of adjusting to almost any situation, or we simply get used to it, I was able to refocus after a couple of weeks. Living in the United States in a time like this is strange, as it is perhaps not the virus that causes your most anxiety, but the federal government response to it, or the lack thereof. I made this collage with materials I already had in my studio, the background is from Zzyzx, California. It shows a declining building that was part of the health spa illegally built there by a man called Curtis Howe Springer. He only had a mining claim to a piece of land in the California desert, but turned the place into a health spa and hotel using free labor selling bogus health products and treatments. He was considered by all accounts a quack and a con man, in a nutshell his story mirrors our current situation.

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The axis on which it rotates

Right now the truth is that I can only review my image file to find images of bodies, skin and affection, studied poses or ways to hide. Isolation only makes me think of the lack of human heat, also trying to remind people that I love them as they are and not as they are represented. Structures that oppress. Bodies and attempts at posing on camera.

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Chris Capten

I am from Greece and I live in Athens where I stayed during the quarantine. My studio is in the basement of my house so my life didn’t change much and I had more time to work undisturbed. The story of my work: Godiva was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia .The Old English name Godgifu or Godgyfu meant “gift of God”; Godiva was the Latinised form. According to the typical version of the story, Lady Godiva took pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering grievously under her husband’s oppressive taxation. Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband, who obstinately refused to remit the tolls. At last, weary of her entreaties, he said he would grant her request if she would strip naked and ride on a horse through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva took him at his word, and after issuing a proclamation that all persons should stay indoors and shut their windows, she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. Just one person in the town, a tailor ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom, disobeyed her proclamation in what is the most famous instance of voyeurism.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153; Lady Godivaâ&#x20AC;?, drawing with golden glitter in velvet, 32x35 cm

Pelle Cass

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I live in Brookline, Massachusetts, USA, in the metropolitan Boston area. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been basically in the house since about March 15. Since then, I go outside only briefly once or twice a day. We have our groceries delivered, so I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been in a store for weeks. I talk to my grown children on the phone and speak at a distance with a neighbor once in a while. I post on Instagram and the likes and messages cheer me up. Life has been, on the face of it, not that different. I work at home normally, and usually spend many hours every day on the computer, working on

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my photos. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the same. But I also used to go on periodical outings to take pictures. I used to like to get a cup of coffee or play tennis with friends. But no more. My days are nearly unbroken now by events, and life is slow. I work a lot and am anxious when I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. My usual process involves taking thousands of pictures that I then work on for weeks in the studio. In my current isolation, I decided to rework old photos -- taken in years past -- to reflect the current mood. The photos submitted were done in March and April, 2020. In the reshuffled time of this series of composite photographs called Crowded Fields, play prevails over competition, the stands are empty and the fields are full, and whole games are shown out of sequence. Most of the pictures

E x h i b i t i o n

were taken at lightly attended events at pools, fields, stadiums, and arenas around Boston, where I live. To make the compositions, I put my camera on a tripod, take up to a thousand pictures, and compile selected figures into a final photograph that is kind of a still time-lapse. I change nothingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not a pixel. I simply select what to keep and what to omit. It all happened precisely as you see it, just not at the same time. What I want to convey is the eeriness of time and a sense of Dionysian chaos.

Crowded Fields series

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Q u a r a n t i n e

Othonas Charalambous

I am from Nicosia, Cyprus.I am, also, quarantined in my studio in Nicosia, Cyprus. As an artist who engages in activities that facilitate community building and intersupport, I am experiencing quarantine both as a personal obstacle and simultaneously as a collective blow, becoming more aware of the shows that got installed but never opened the doors to receive their audiences, the numerous works that will not achieve their â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;becomingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; as they lay unfinished on the

E x h i b i t i o n

Towards Reconfigured Identities S y n t h e t i c l e a t h e r, p o l y e s t e r t h r e a d , s t a i n l e s s s t e e l eyelets, metal screws. 69x59.5cm

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floor and the artists that have been deprived of so many opportunities. Everything that one has looked forward to is either being cancelled or postponed, until further notice. We are collectively faced with a volatile ultimatum of being forced to rethink the terms of our own practice, a decision that does not spring through oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own desire and/or free will. My experience in quar-

Towards Reconfigured Identities Synthetic l e a t h e r, p o l y e s t e r t h r e a d , stainless steel eyelets, metal screws. 69x59.5cm

antine is one of practice related choices, of decision making; with no opportunity or vague possibility of acquiring new materials to work with I explore new directions and forge different paths that can only be supported based on what is already available within my own studio. Developing my ongoing experimentation with (faux) leather, I am attempting to re-direct my practice of sewing sculptures by exploring the potentiality of the work to gradually move away from the wall and embrace three dimensional form through an expansive scale and form. Quarantine as an accidental residency. A spontaneous studiobound-residency.

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Christina Chatziantoniou

line up wash up party up. video, 00.00.36, Still001 Reaching towards the ends of my studies led to my Thesis project titled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Referencesâ&#x20AC;?. That was the starting point of my personal search as a visual artist. The fields that interest me the most are those of appropriation, transmutation and alteration of objects, information and other artworks , which I work and study currently. What will occur by extracting the identity of an object and redefining it? How changing the frame of reference of an information affect its reintegration in time and place? What is the direction of a piece of art when an artist uses it

as a tool for the creation of a new one? Having those questions in mind as benchmarks in every path I take, without searching for absolute answers, creates a friction of fundamental personal interest. Photography and videoart are my needed means of communicating my thoughts in a form of art. My visual identity adapts depending on the context of each project, not usually being the core of it. However, patterns, light , shadow and formalist approach are frequent in my work. Quarantine.

Line up wash up party up. video, 00.00.36, Still001

At first it was awkward and weird. But onwards you learn to adapt, and you create a new reality that echoes the old one but relies in new facts. The much-needed rest that I was seeking during my daily life came by. The art that somehow had thinned out before quarantine, flushed out. It is time to finish the half-done work that I postponed.The repetition comes. Repetition. Repetition. It is exhausting. The sadness emerges. Fuck, too many

deaths.I am lucky that my family is healthy, and I am fine. I could not care less if I won’t be able to greet people with the regular handshake. To conclude, I received the 800€ waiter allowance. Of course, every artist of any field should be waitresses as well. I put on my sarcastic smile and wrap up. This note was written on 21.04.2020, in Athens, Greece, at my boyfriend’s house.

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Katerina Christidi

E x h i b i t i o n

I ride my bike to my studio in Pantin, a neighboring suburb of Paris. Since the quarantine started on March 17 in France, the exhibitions in which I was to take part have been cancelled or postponed. Along with this misfortune, I’ve had the luck to be able to get to the studio. I go there every day — there’s no difference currently, between work days and days off - and use all my time working in nearly complete calm. Under these conditions, I’ve been able to work without interruption on a large scale drawing that would normally take a long time to do, because the image reveals itself slowly , in successive layers of finely worked charcoal. I’ve also finished another in a smaller scale using the same process. At the same time I keep a sketch book where I sketch during the long phone calls, at this period of time. As with all my drawings, familiar images get mixed with unfamiliar formes appearing in an automatic yet controlled way. Katerina Christidi April 2020 “Everyday life is strange, when grown in a strange land”. Thomas Mann, The magic mountain My ini-

Untitled, 185x220cm, charcoal on canvas

tial stimulus and inspiration for my work is the observation of people’s everyday life in their environment, of their relationships, attitudes and behaviors, all these elements who give away the multifarious and contradictory human nature. Then I shiftand organize them again in new narratives enriched by my personal views, placing the characters in absurd situations. My exploration focuses on the creation of a world where vague figures coexist with fragmentary unknown landscapes. The idea behind my work lies on the decomposition and re-composition of a combination of elements which are opposed, added one on top of the other, merge, so they might at the end express an unstable situation between multiple realities. I try to bring to the surface a sense of oscillation and uncertainty about where we really stand, through a dialogue of different levels of representation. Forms are linked together by a controlled yet unpredictable development, since the construction process -which is vital for me- is involving association and successive layers until the final image is formed. This escalating process allows the creation of a channel between the conscious and the subconscious.

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Dionisis Christofilogiannis

Covid19 turmoil presents at the beginning an unprecedented and complicated time for me in organizing my personal and professional “normality”. That lasted for a few days only. This locked-down condition for me was smooth at the end because I used to work isolated either at home or in my studio but just because it was forced condition it was quite strange. The psychology of staying and working at home under this new normality was quite interesting. My home as a studio space was a source of inspiration as my latest works have a lot to do with strict conditions. It was quite easy to continue my “strict freedom” series with simple collage-drawings on A4 paper. I appreciated how much I needed art for my mental well-being.

E x h i b i t i o n

Untitled, collage and pencil drawing on A4 paper

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E x h i b i t i o n

Dura While outside the world seems to be in a surrealistic situation because of CODIV-19 perfuses the news,people around me starting to organize a concept of being at home, meeting just a certain circle of friends or their flat mates. It feels like everyone is very affected by the situation - because, some of them lose their jobs or get no new commissions. I look out of the window observe the Armageddon and feel the fear about existential loss because of a virus, which everyone could have, even me. Not really knowing, how this situation will change in my life, I was not really motivated to create a CODIV-19 rescue plan. I already don’t go in clubs, meet lots of friends or need social contacts. I’m more than happy to stay home and to concentrate on my work. So, for me, to be in quarantine make many things easier- I don’t need an excuse to stay home.First thing that came to my mind was to have just one person who spends time with me. Springtime has also affected, of course. This romantic idea, a love story during the quarantine, was one of the fundamentals for my new project. What is really annoying about this quarantine time is, that I can‘t go to the gym for training, that there is

no place to get a good beer on tap (I don’t like beer from bottles) and that DIY markets are closed. Everything you wanted to buy online, is already sold or the prices get high. So I needed to build my new quarantine boyfriend in my studio, with stuff I already have. Also, there is no workshop open to build a setting.Another thing I’m developing is to program 3D animations. For me it is an experiment to combine installations and 3D programming. How can a virtual person and an object really participate on your life? How can this created world become authentic? To find this points between sculpturing/installation and virtuality is the center work at the moment. This character I am creating, is a person who likes to lay in the garden. He is a heavy and athletic person, who likes to wrestle. He is made for fighting sport: punching, kicking, throw on the floor. He is a figure you can let out all your aggressions on. He is like your best friend, brother and somehow lover together.His body language has also another meaning - he looks like he wants to be hugged. For that, however, he is constructed, which means that he goes crazy by having closeness. This work also shows, how too much roman-

COVID boyfriend, 00.00.12

tic or ideal of closeness can cause disorder to people. I live in Leipzig / Germany in my studio with two dogs and a blind cat. We have the option to use a small yard with lots of sun. For me there is no real distance between living and working. https:// vimeo.com/413752289 and https://vimeo.com/413752125

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E x h i b i t i o n

Hannes Egger

With the ban on socialising designed to contain the COVID-19 epidemic, Egger, has been one of millions of people worldwide who have been cooped up in the kitchen for hours on end, cooking, washing and springcleaning. Mealtimes are the highspots of the quarantine day, but in between he has been reading, surfing the Internet, drawing, listening to music and ‘chatting’ with friends. Amid pots and pans, kitchen stove and workdesk, he has got up an audio performance that everyone can interpret from their homes. The six-minute slot on his website is dedicated to all who are confined to the house at this tricky juncture. What prompted Kitchen Performance or The Order of Things was Martha Rosler‘s 1975 performance Semiotic of the Kitchen. Hannes Egger takes his cue from the American artiste’s performance by donning an apron and pronouncing

the word (in English). He then suddenly starts digging all sorts of things out of cupboards. It boils down in the end to making and consuming a nice comforting cup of coffee. But by the time the performance ends, nothing will be as it was before: a new order will have been achieved. Egger’s invitation here is to enjoy, in full awareness, a physical experience within the walls of the home, living the situation wittingly and with a pinch of irony, taking stock of the order of things and possibly the order of this world of ours. In Kitchen Performance or The Order of Things Egger wonders how far our general habits, perceived life-view and criteria of order may be altered, and how much they will have to be tailored to the new circumstances. Will Corona Virus reshape world order? Can we think again and re-plan our world via this crisis, possibly starting from our own kitchen?

Kitchen Performance or the Order of Things, Audioperformance (6’18’’) https://vimeo.com/404887064

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E x h i b i t i o n

Kim Engelen As an international working artist, I see art as my poison as well as my medicine in living as a social human being. Via my work, I am trying o find soft connections. And in the output, I imagine I convey emotions of healing. Art means life to me, a reason for living— an exit from life and back into it. But this seems now to be completely shifted. Since I can’t travel. I can’t do projects where I actively seek for con-

nections with people At least not in the life sense. On the one hand nothing much changes in my regular daily routine. Most of the times I am behind my computer working anyway. What did happen is that I re-activated my project Sun-Penetrations. I am cataloging my huge collection of archived Sun-Penetrations. And everyday I am sending out 1 into the Online world. And collect them (so far) together on my website: https:// kimengelen.com/40-days-isolation

Sun-Penetra tions,WhatCo uldHaveBeen ,Berlin,Germ a n y, 2 0 1 5

Sun-Penetrations,Hemingway-in-Cuba, 2013

Sun-Penetrations, Adapting in Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia, 2020

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Sergio Femar

These days I could consider myself a lucky person because my studio is just on the floor above and it allows me to keep working. The problem is that I’m running out of material to work with - I usually collect it from containers, buildings under construction, the countryside, etc- so it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to create new works due to the impossibility of leaving home. Added to this, some national projects with my gallery”Aurora Vigil-Escalera” have been put off and the majority of exhibitions and shows have been called off until October at least. Despite this, in Germany, the situation

seems to be a little bit better, so I hope that my projects with my german gallery “Gallerie Biesenbach” can be held soon. As for my creation process, isolation is helping me to reevaluate my working process and to develop new projects and ideas. I’m trying to make the most of this moment in the hope of everything goes better soon.

About the work Title: Das Brot Size: 20,5 x 24 x 10 cm Technique: Oil, pencil and acrylic Date: March 2020

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E x h i b i t i o n

Francesca Fini During my quarantine in Rome, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m creating a live streaming performance using the live feed of the webcams that are framing monuments and historical piazzas in Italy, now deserted for the national lockdown. Using the data produced by the movement in space of the very few people going around for basic errands, processed by a software that I created specifically for this project, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m producing live generative web-based sounds and visual experiences. The Italian *piazzas* are framed by a webcam system that broadcasts online the flow of their chaotic life. A cold, indifferent look, in the sun or in the rain, which does not change in the midst of changes. Those squares are now deserted, while life in quarantine is hidden invisibly inside the houses, inside the silent buildings that harmoniously surround them. The webcams today collect the testimony of a surreal event. All the life, once feverish, becomes now a fleeting and ephemeral circumstance: the squares are manned by police vans, enlivened here and there, by the flight of a seagull, by a flag in the wind, by a runnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bicycle, by a masked couple walking a dog. In the silent void, these short passing lives, these lonely adventures of the confined city, are narrative elements of a dystopian story, which I spy and pursue avidly as if I were at the window of

one of those buildings. Through motion tracking technology, I steal the webcam signal and feed it to a software that I created for this project, which records and tracks visually the movement of people, vehicles, objects, and animals, transforming the data flow in a concert for synthesizer: the smallest movement produces a sound, a modulation, a graphic visualization, a digital effect. Finally, I

return everything to the network, through live streaming on Facebook, in a creative ring of manipulations and interpretations in real-time - an open semantic loop that ideally gives a voice to the mute explorers of the locked city. video of the live performance - https:// vimeo.com/404843767 website of the project - https://sconfinamento.tumblr.com/

/S)CONFINAMENTO - first chapter / hic sunt leones Networked digital performance for live webcam & synth // april 2020 14 minutes , live streaming performance (on any platform - Facebook, twitter, periscope, youtube ecc): 45 min

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Caspar de Gelmini

E x h i b i t i o n

My life has been greatly influenced by the pandemic. First, I’m both, a visual artist and a musician. As a musician I’m teaching from home, via Video. As a Video Artist, I’m forced to work with scientific Material. Not only, because it is my intention, but also because it’s difficult

to find filming opportunites, during these conditions. The material was taken from a very famous hospital, Charité and deals with Cell Material, which is also connected to Viruses. At home I feel locked, like in a surrealistic Film. Life has become a Tarkovsky Situation…

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E x h i b i t i o n

Eleonora Geortsiaki

Untitled-19, plaster

Somedays I was feeling great, but there were other days. In these â&#x20AC;&#x153;other daysâ&#x20AC;?, I experienced feelings and states I have never encountered before. Days like these were the ones I needed to get to know myself, as if I did not know me at all. I felt the need to not do or hear anything or anyone. The need of only hearing myself, my thoughts and my body. Through this I met some unknown parts of myself and I reached a deeper kind of love.

The hardest thing to me was to feel and communicate with my mind and body simultaneously. Maybe, through this selfisolation, I made a small step towards finding balance between my emotions and my body image. Maybe this is my starting point. I was born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece and I have spent my student days in Ioannina. When the pandemic started, I was in Ioannina and have been quarantined here ever since.

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Prodromos Haralampidis

Untitled,30cm x 40cm, oil on canvason canvas

I was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. I am currently studying at the Athens School ofFine Arts. Over the past 10 years, I have been living and working in Keramikos, Athens.The starting material in my works is a collection of images from movies, commercials,magazines, the internet and my personal archive. Many of them were taken from the surrounding area, such as the Agricultural School, the Philopappou Area and the coastalfront. These places are my getaway destinations when I need a break from the house andthe dense construction of Athens.The need to view natural landscapes away from the urban

Untitled, 50cm x 70 cm, oil on canvas

noise has been exacerbated these days due to the enforced house restrictions, quarantines and various otherprotective measures against the new coronavirus. This need has been transferred to thewhite canvas, making these paintings act as an escape mechanism. Depending on my mood, my works can range from being dominated by black andgray to being filled with vivid bright colors. Thanks to the various qualities of oil painting(layering, transparency, volume), I have created imaginary landscapes which either depictnatural and man-made utopias or dark dystopian places.

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Hugo Houayek

E x h i b i t i o n

During quarantine, I managed to execute a series of paintings. They are small scale paintings because they reflect the domestic space where they were made. These are works that have an expressive character, with marked and loose brushstrokes, showing the speed with which they are made,

demonstrating the excess of free time, idle and the inactivity provided by the quarantine. So we can understand that the paintings were executed in a compulsive, repetitive, as a way to occupy my mind with all this idle time. Each day I do 3 to 6 works, so approximately 190 paintings have already been done.

P a i n t i n g s 2 0 2 0 , A c r y l i c a n d g o u a c h e o n p a p e r, 2 1 x 1 5 c m

Maria Ikonomopoulou

I am based in Rotterdam (NL) where my home and studio are. My partner lives and works in Antwerp (BE). Normally we travel often since our home cities are in one-hour distance from each other. When Belgium announced the closing of the borders, I decided to go to Antwerp and spend the time in quarantine with my partner. I transformed the attic of his house into my new studio and I continued my artistic practice there with material that I brought from Rotterdam. Despite a deeply uncomfortable feeling about the globeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s condition and a lot of undefined wor-

ries for the future, I see this period of slowdown as a gift. Being able to work focused, enjoying the garden in springtime and spending time with my lover is a bless. The three drawings (attached in the email) were not planned to happen. Since I had no drawing paper with me and all the stores with artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s supplies are closed in Belgium I have improvised with newspapers from another project and glossy acid free paper, used by my friend for storage of art works.

Triptych. April 2020. Antwerp newspapers, acid free p a p e r, p e r m a n e n t m a r k e r, 5 6 x 3 6 c m

Q u a r a n t i n e

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Ids_art.drone.projects In archeology and art history, the appearance of monumental sculpture is considered very important. In ids_art_ drone_projects the works it is a gesture of connecting technology with modern art. Dionisis Christofilogiannis and Charalampos Papadopoulos are drawing with light known and familiar worldwide symbols over the attic sky with a drone. During quarantine the drone was the only medium able to â&#x20AC;&#x153;escapeâ&#x20AC;? this isolation at home and drew a rooftop over the neighborhood of Athenian city center. Apart from that in quarantine we used to cook a lot. That helped to feel grounded. In contrast to trying to keep up with social media, staying in touch with your friends and family over the phone and with video calls can be really nice during these times. Not only is it a great practice to have little mental health and wellness check-ins with your loved ones, catching up while apart can help with feelings of isolation.

E x h i b i t i o n

Rooftop Light drawing, 45x275 meters, 3 waypoints drone flight 1min exposure time, iso-100, f/9,5, 120m distance, Nikond5300 by Dionisis Christofilogiannis and Charalampos Papadopoulos , Athens

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Nikomachi karakostanoglou

When social distancing measures were announced, we moved as a family up to our mountain house in Nymfaion, a remote village in the highlands of North Greece. So far the experience has been almost therapeutic. We live in the village along with another 16 residents whom we seldom meet in the cobblestone alleys of the village. We wake up to a morning meditation and then take a long walk in the woods. We let the daily progression of spring soak in through the blossoming of the trees and the chromatic variations of the landscape all around us. At the same time one feels the urge to communicate with an outside world, as our secluded world

out here, steeped into the forest and wildlife, seems to be a universe on its own --itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as if we are living an absolute fulfillment! At night, as we watch the news and get the updates on the death toll around the world, our energy changes and the terror and grief for those around us, stifles our hearts. However, nature in its scale and healing power always pacifies us by neutralizing these negative thoughts.

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S e r i e s : C o r p o r a l T o p o g r a p h y S e r i e s I n k o n p a p e r, 5 9 x 7 9 c m

E x h i b i t i o n

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Stelios Karamanolis

The pictographic signals from his raw canvases unfold the world different than the reality we seem to belong to. His creatures seem to carry history with them, engaged as they are with the ancient circular elements and geometric shapes, the Eastern Mediterranean vocabulary of mythological motifs and modern contemporary life. With bright crispy yellows that assist the few Attic-style black lines, this legacy is connected with ideas that demand to exist; beyond normal control. Amalgamated into the surreal these are the

subterranean entities that exist in the psyche of us all, just beneath the surface of the waking day. Karamanolis carefully choses the fragments of past and future tenses. The rules of engagement are thus: aesthetic and technical approach are not related, philosophical thoughts become the articulations of process and time, inspiring thoughts on our personal (un)-identifiable cultural roots.

Untitled, 45x52cm, Colored pencil and acrylic on raw canvas, Courtesy of Flatland gallery

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Panagiotis Karambambas Things are looking smooth for the majority of the Greek countryside so far. Since we where fortunate enough not to have any case of the virus anywhere near our small village of Galatas, morale is kept high around here for now. I am allowed to work on our orange fields as usual, and since the authorities are not very strict, I still have access to my studio from time to time.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;yellow growth1â&#x20AC;? charcoal, pastel and oil pastel on paper 150 x 310 cm

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Akis Karanos

I live and work in Athens and this is where quarantine found me. Just before it started I adopted an abandoned puppy and I live with my girl and our cat. This hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t changed my life a lot, except for this unprecedented yearn, rooting deeper by day -to touch/ smell/ lick skin, surfaces, dust. The coming of spring has only made this- now libidic, desire worse. Exploring the gap between senses and visual stimuli, marking the distance between physical and virtual presence, meaning giving and the pursuit of (right to) anoesia in an existential context (pure freedom) exploiting cultural, mythical, historical and personal imagery (ele-

ment and photos found on the web or taken by me) into new playful hybrid compositions, hopefully not in need of -but creating, narrative. Visual wordplays, subterranean digital multilayer skinning targeting banality, respectful to Dadaism, arte povera, situationism and the anarchic aspects of experiential thought patterns forming poetry.

WFTEOTWWMDOML ii (Waiting for the and of the worldwith my dogon my lap). Digital Image

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Emilia Kina

Untitled/45/56cm, oil on canvas/molded loom

I spend my quarantine time in my family home near Krakow, Poland. In the initial period of severe restrictions on movement, I created a small workshop at home (I deal with creative work in a studio in Krakow on a daily basis). This time is and has been hard for me, not only because of the prevailing epidemic. My boyfriend and I were moving to a new studio, which at that time involved a lot of stress and logistical work on how and when to move. The time spent looking for a new place and the move itself, plus the atmosphere caused by the epidemic,

made it very difficult and partly discouraged me from acting. Rather, I focused on planning future series of paintings, sketching and looking for inspiration, or making semi-finished products, such as beating looms or preparing properly formed boards. I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say that quarantine time is a good time for me, despite more time, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard for me to escape from overlaying information and focus on creating. On the other hand, I was able to do things that I probably would have felt sorry for in the normal situation.

Untitled/50,5/50,5/4cm, oil on canvas/molded loom

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Giorgos Kontis

I was born and raised in Athens but due to studies, post-fordism, and love, I ended up having lived in five different countries. The unprecedented pandemic outbreak found me at a new beginning, yet again, in a new city and country. This time it was Berlin, after almost six years in London. The lockdown came when I was less than two months in this new city and amidst moving, bureaucratical matters, and a never-ending flat search. Yet, I must say that despite the unfortunate timing I consider myself lucky as I already had found a job; furthermore, one with a contract. I cannot imagine, I am scared to imagine, how things would be if I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be surrounded by the feeling of safety that this offers. I cannot imagine how I would be feeling if this would have found me while still living in London, where Boris found it a good idea to practically gamble with the lives of the people -fortunately, after the in-

ternational criticism he stepped back from his initial policy. Apart from wishing everyone to be well and safe, the quarantine experience has, eventually, come to me with this fear. How could things have otherwise been? How will all the self-employed friends and colleagues be able to pay their rents? How can small businesses survive this situation? How devastating will yet another financial crisis be? While all of these are addressed through the privileged prism of living in a rich European country. Apart from the reconfiguration of the relationship between the one and the whole, this time of social distancing, self-isolation, and perhaps introspection -a much desired introspection- has come to me with such thoughts. Thoughts that may be simple yet claustrophobic and deal with basic matters such as working rights and politics, or which the relation can be between an individual and the state.

Untitled, Encaustic and acrylic on muslin, 46 x 36 cm

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Georgia Kotretsos

“What Are You Doing With Your Freedom?”, archival inkjet print, 60 x 40 cm, 2003-2004

E x h i b i t i o n

We are located in the Gold Coast, in Dearborn and Elm street in Chicago, IL, in 2003-4, on the 25 th floor of a highrise luxury apartment building overlooking the loop of downtown Chicago and the apartments across the road. These are the windows of my own apartment, the hand painted poster-like works spell â&#x20AC;&#x153;What Are You Doing With Your Freedom?â&#x20AC;?. Post the Iraq-war, the USA heavily branded the liberties of its people. I closely observed my surroundings and

often wondered how people managed their liberties behind the posted signs. The posters were visible from across the road. Any tenant from the 10 th to the 33 rd floor from across the road could read the message at hand. This work has never been shown as documentation, it was on show for over six month. Now, it is another occasion to consider what have we done with our freedom all this time, what are we planning to do next. What is being compromised here?

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Antonis Larios I was born in Greece. Since the 10th of March every live artistic event has been suspended in Athens. I work for the National Greek Opera as a Set painter and inspite of the fact that all of the performances were cancelled, i kept on working because the Set construction department didn’t close. Work made me feel alive during quarantine.

“ S h r i ” , 6 0 c m x 4 5 c m , c h a r c o a l o n p a p e r. Shri is a Sanskrit word, widely used in many countries as a title of Holiness. It was created on March. In this work i tried to create a “Holy Man” by using the elements of Death and Religion.

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Quentin Lefranc

Everything happens in a sealed off space. Workspace and life are combined, there is no escape. Deadlines and speed are not on the agenda. In this restricted space, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m looking for other directions, I want to lose myself, I want to gain some time. Not to save it, but to consume it. In this way, I wandered all over the space that defined my confinement. I stopped at places without purpose, I stepped to the left, to the right, then I made a few strides in another direction. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an escape without a destination. A pursuit of time with an itinerary that is neither direct nor reasonable, and which has created a maze-like structure. It is a new consideration of space that stems from ambling around.

I am writing to you from my Parisian apartment where I am confined. I d o n â&#x20AC;&#x2122; t h a v e a c c e s s t o m y s t u d i o a c t u a l l y. S o I work on models. Labyrinth, cotton thread, tinted and waxed M D F, m o d e l : 1 4 x 5 5 x 5 5 c m

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Ugo Li

I am confined to Paris alone. At the beginning it was difficult but now for a week I feel better. The situation is very inspiring and really allows you to refocus on yourself. What could be better than doing painting to express your creativity. On the one hand I feel alone and isolated but on the other hand I have never felt so connected with everyone in this planet.

More of Less 24.03.20 o i l o n p a p e r, 2 0 2 0 , F R A N C E , P a r i s

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lom-of-LaMa

Since we love, live and work together as a duo, the quarantine has not changed our whole ever yday life situation, as much as it might has happened to other people. Together we create our life basically in complete togetherness â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and we simply like being together all day long. We live in a three room old building flat between harbour and city centre of Dortmund. We are very fortunate to be surrounded by a great house-community and neighborhood that organizes food sharing and support services for each other. Since we do not have our own studio, we expand our living and working spaces in all directions: A rope ladder connects us to the spacious flat roof of our dear neighbour, which can also serve

as a photo studio or workshop if the weather is gracious. For most artists, the need to constantly change their approach is an ever yday requirement. And yet due to the sudden occurrence of such an extraordinary situation, we certainly perceive our daily virtual and analogue environment differently. For us personally, there are everyday experiences and observations, which bring new aspects to our work with regard to our ongoing concept of the >shared self<

S h a r e h o l d e r, 2 0 2 0

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Antistructure series

Alex Lysakowski My lockdown time has been a good break from photography. Its given me time to decompress from most of my ongoing personal projects and go through some work thats been waiting on my attention. Overall, i needed a breather from the antistructure series, however with the weather in Canada warming up now, i think I’ll have to get out and realize some concepts.

“Antistructure” is a body of work that focuses on exaggerated architectural forms within banal spaces. The farcical nature of the manipulated structures creates a surreal world of absurdity in an otherwise mundane landscape eluding to an environment beyond the realm of any real architectural forms but still preserving the potential for their existence.

Antistructure series

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Pantelis Vitaliotis Magneto For me, quarantine was close to every day routine. Now that it’s ended and after a while, I can say that probably it’s been like a “gift” to me, full of free personal time to deal with the way I wanted, deleting obligations, deadlines, people and things I wanted to avoid. When lock-

down was imposed, I had already started some projects and kept on working on them with greater concentration and clearer thinking. In addition, during the last week I have stopped working in order to enjoy the absolute laziness without feeling guilty.

Untitled

89x92 cm

Acrylic and ink on linen canvas

Untitled

50x70 cm

Acrylic and ink on linen canvas

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Centauromachy

Nikolaos Mainaris In April, 2020 I created a series of 13 collages with the body as central theme. The body as carrier of informations, as mirror of the society, as battlefield. A battle between the healthy and infected body, the white and the black body, the normative and queer, the petrified and alive, the discriminated and self-identified body. With sculptures of the Acropolis Museum, works from Jean Michel Basquiat and pictures from Wolfgang Tillmans, I tried to create unique embodied compositions. The perfect body of ancient Greece, the discriminated

body of Basquiat and the vulnerable body of Tillmans are unified in one composition with all these qualities. I am since 4 weeks now in quarantine. I feel privileged to have a home with a balcony and a nice view over the city of Athens. I feel privileged to have time for contemplation. I needed this break. I was overworked and close to burnout. I enjoy to hear the birds and giving myself this present to slow down. After days of fear and panic I am starting now to enjoy this self isolation. It makes me stronger and wiser. I feel blessed.

Agnes

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Andreas Mallouris

Yellow top and oregano, 22,5x9,5x7cm, soap, metal, oregano, 2020

I wash my hands with soap for at least 20 seconds, persistently, as indicated. I count silently from one to twenty. Last day in London before lockdown, happiness, that sunny Friday morning, a brunch at The Wolseley, 160 Piccadilly Rd, and an exciting conversation with G. Mourning, my entire routine was whipped over a night. The last two years I fly Sundays to London and back

to Cyprus on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Wednesdays to Saturdays working with patients and projects. A homemade studio, the laptop, the Instagram, the garden, the dogs and Y. Solidarity. I read it everywhere. But how? I declare a body and mind in depression, traumatized and violated, infused with fear and despair. I protect you to protect me. I wash my hands with soap for at least 20 seconds,

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persistently, as indicated. I count silently from one to twenty. I wake up and I sleep and wake up again and I watched 10 episodes of MasterChef Australia in a day. No, I didn’t watch MasterChef Greece, so much stab in the back attitude. And there was this nightmare that I had for two nights in a row that I was trapped in MasterChef cooking at station no5 while time was ticking. I didn’t shave for 45 days and then I decided to shave, keeping the mustache, staring at the mirror and I faced a porn star of the 80’s. There were mornings that Y., me and the dogs had breakfast in the garden and reading. I read the “Essayism”, “An Apartment on Uranus”, “Pornotpia” and many articles relevant on my research. Watched lots of Pina Bausch shows, and “Succession” and “The Circle of Books” and interviews and fashion shows, especially that particular favorite of mine, Raf Simons FW2016. I cooked and ate in a day a Pavlova with lemon custard, a Pumpkin tart, a Cheesecake, risottos, many risottos. I drove in a surreal naked city and rarely saw individuals walking. No, it was not a reflective period. It was

E x h i b i t i o n

obsessiveness. I wash my hands with soap for at least 20 seconds, persistently, as indicated. I count silently from one to twenty. I sometimes produce in my homemade studio. Projects shaped under new perspectives and toxicities. My material prior lockdown, soap, suddenly has another impact in another context. A whole system of capitalism is collapsing and in the name of fear totalitarian measures were imposed as having no other solution. Perforated leaves of liliums by the snails’ colonies. Normotopia, that invaded our aesthetics. Y. has thrown them to neighbor’s property. Uni goes online, many platforms online. Now sessions online clash, overlapping. A routine as an infection to my system. I wash my hands with soap for at least 20 seconds, persistently, as indicated. I count silently from one to twenty.

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Miranda Fengyuan Zhang Currently, I am in quarantine in New York City. In this lock down environment, as everyone gets stressed of losing their securities and safeties, the air even smells like the horror of the tensity. I really throw myself into a full time working mode without distribution or as distribution against the horror of the uncertainty. In between, I stare at the empty street thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nev-

er been this quiet since I moved here. The sky becomes the shape of my window, and my back is constantly sore of bending over to reach the thread ahead. Since all the worry and concern are useless, as my day and night have been immersed together just for making, I am longing deeply for the smell of the sea, the warmth of the wind and the massive green on the mountain belly.

Untitled (crying face), wool on wood, 30 x 32 inches

Pledging, wool on wood, 36 x 46 inches

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Eva Mitala

My experience in Quarantine found me in California, my second home after Athens. It has been challenging for me to create art in the beginning of the confinement as I had a feeling that the future was stolen. All plans I had set up for my near future fell apart and as a result the only thing I was able to do was to turn my attention to sense the movements in the field. Not gross movements, the subtle movements. We sense time. Time is movement. In a lock down we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t move. The condition we are in, slows down time. When time is slowing, the future is disappearing. If there was no future there was no

need for me to create art. My only need was to listen. Seeing that the only thing I had to face was the present moment, myself in the present, I started to look for some feeling of trust in something. I found that in art. Art evokes such feelings, as it is a universal language that shows us a shared world, a common humanity. Being both a spectator and a protagonist during the pandemic, seeing the news outside of myself as a viewer and then feeling them inside me, an inner dia-

Silkscreen, 47x36 cm, prints A4

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logue was starting, and I was becoming the protagonist. In that context and with the idea that the â&#x20AC;&#x153;threatâ&#x20AC;? is something invisible, hoovering in the air, I felt that if I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t allow to be taken by my own fear and personal insecurities, I can build bridges with the sublime. Turned my attention into the process of silkscreen and as result a few weeks later, I came across: A series of silkscreens opening a dialogue between the empty spaces of cut out papers and their environment. The solid space of the stencil focuses attention in such a way as to both highlight what is seen and what is unseen. In that moment the viewer notices what is being made available and what is blocked. Playing with the focus of what you

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can see and cannot see, the contours of the stencils offer a third dimension which reveals a digital communication. An element of time is being introduced and the integration of the ancient stencil printing technique in the modern digital world. The transparency of the work evokes a sense of freedom and gives air to the solid spaces that now have become both positive and negative space.

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Melina Fakitsa Mosland

Water Portrait.

I am a Greek-Norwegian artist living in Athens. The beginning of all this madness found me in Weekend trip with some friends and I must admit , back then I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think it would be tha big a deal. Returning to Athens I packed up my things and moved in with my partner and our 2 dogs. The first days were a little bit weird as there was a lot of uncertainty and nobody could really believe that this dystopian scenario was now a reality . Also the Greek media doing once again what they know best , spreading fake news and fear all over did not help the situation .Meanwhile my father was stuck in Norway for good for a trip that was supposed to only last 10 days and we in Athens unable to exit our homes without having to send a message to the government stating our purpose of exit .As the days passed I started to get used to the fact that we are quarantined and I returned to my artistic practise. This time having nothing to disturb me I turned the living room into a studio and started working on my projects again. Feeling that I am stuck at home, I had to use whatever resources I had. I started paying attention to stuff I had in the house and the potential they had to

be used as art materials. I ended up with making some new sculptures for my ongoing project but I also started experimenting with photography using the household items. One stone , a glass ball , a set of eyes cut out of an old magazine and a mirror where my materials for the photograph I submit to you. The days that followed were full of cooking new recipes and I even got the patience to sit down and finally learn how to sew properly . So now I have a fair amount of handmade summer clothes which I so much hope that I will soon be able to wear outside.

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Yuto Nemoto I am Japanese artist from Tokyo due to quarantine that I cannot go outside. This situation doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t give me a fuck. I decided to paint at home. This drawing is part of a number of drawings. I am looking for what I can do in this situation.

16/04/2020

23/02/2020

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Nocera&Ferri

The idea behind our â&#x20AC;&#x153;TIN FOODâ&#x20AC;? story is to elevate tin food, usually considered unhealthy, as crucial to survive in this pandemic moment. About being sold out in many supermarkets, we highlighting how priorities can change quickly. We shot those images at the beginning of our lock down here in London, on the 6th of April 2020.

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TIN FOOD series

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TIN FOOD series

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With no doubt these days have affected my artistical routine. Being quarantined in Bucharest, Romania, it feels like I can be anywhere. I don`t necessarily belong to the city or the region in which I stay for the moment. Therefore, I have built an inside world, which nurtures my creative process. The repetitive days make it feel like I live in a cyclic period of time, in which one day seems to repeat on and on, until I manage to do things the way they should be done. This would be the only way to es-

E x h i b i t i o n

cape the maze. The introspective process reached the first level of interest, with whom I spend most of my days. The desire to see my friends and family back in my hometown, Piatra Neamt, is alive more than ever before. However, this period helped me prioritize my interests, goals and beliefs. I am still waiting to wake up.

Martyrs, oil, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 135/95 cm

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The King and the Guards, I n k o n r i c e p a p e r, 9 0 χ 84 cm

Ilias Papailiakis The quarantine brought along a newfound desire to explore an unhacknneyed direction in my work. Up until the end of 2019, I was using as reference, images from books and social media platforms. As of 2020, I’ ve adopted a different approach and have abandoned these references altogether.

The isolation, brought along time for personal reflection, and I’ve started drawing inspiration from my own experiences. Thus, experimentation is no longer something to be feared off, but has become an ever helpful methodology. Now my own imagination, emotions and experiences take the lead and shape my ideas.

T h e a r c h e r, i n k o n p a p e r, 200x100cm

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Andreas Papamichael During the first days of the quarantine, I was trying to figure out what was going on, as everything happened so quickly. On this period I was working on the final projects for my degree show as part of the MFA, Art, space and Nature of the University of Edinburgh. While I was informed that the university was closed, I felt lost but the same time I challenged myself, seeking for a new kind of an artistic respond to this unfamiliar situation which we have been facing. That time, while everything was locked down, including of my university, I still had some access to the building. The action of ‘’ State of Emergency ‘’ took place. The ‘’State of emergency’’ is an action and a public video projection performed during the covid19 outbreak in 15th of March 2020, at the Evolution House of the Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh University. The work was a text, projected onto a public building that was meant to be a message to aliens ‘’DEAR ALIENS, IF YOU HEAR ME INVADE EARTH NOW.’’ While the projection was shown from the streets,

I was also standing in the middle of the front street, wearing a protective mask. This was intended as both an answer and a thought provoking action reflecting the situation that humanity is facing. The aim of the text is to raise awareness on the state of affairs of this ongoing global crisis, which also has a bearing on wars, refugee and immigrant crisis, gun trade, overpopulation and climate change etc. Paradoxically, the covid19 outbreak was an ideal scenario for this action. Aside from the irony, the text aims to por- tray a deeper message. It seeks for some extraterrestrial help even when we don’t know whether that exists; it could also be seen as an allegory to the concepts of religion and god. After this action took place, I was being self isolated at my flat, while sometimes I was going outside for an hour walk, if the weather wasn’t bad enough. Moreover, knowing that, this will last longer than I expected, I contacted my country’s embassy, the Cyprus embassy in UK and I asked for repatriation. It did not last longer than a few days of waiting for an

State of E m e r g e n c y, 15.3.20

answer, until on the late evening of 13th of April they informed me about a flight on 15th of April from London to Cyprus which I could join. Thus, in one day I packaged all my personal belongings and I left my flat in Edinburgh. Then, I took the midnight train from Edinburgh to London on the next day, 14th of April. The journey was really long as was about 6 hours trip, being with three big luggage, wearing a protective mask and cloves and trying to donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any physical contacts with other people on the train. The same situation but with more check controls and strict rules from the local authorities were took place in the Heathrow Airport in London. Then, the experience in the airplane was Indescribable. I had an uncan-

ny feeling of insecurity on what I will faced in Cyprus knowing that I will get checked for the covid19 and after this long day I will moved to a specific hotel room for staying locked for 14 days. Furthermore, our flight was landed after 2 hours delay at Larnaca airport at midnight of 15th of April. During the check points we were asked about our health condition and I was lucky enough to have with me my papers which prove that I belong to the vulnerable people groups, as I have serious medical history condition. For that reason, I was lucky enough to have a choice of going for self isolation at my home in Paphos, as I did. Today is the last day of the 14 days of strictly isolation in my house in Paphos.

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Dionisiοs Pappas Last month I was in a really complicated situation. Two days before the government announced the restriction measures, I had just moved into an Airbnb accommodation because I was already in the process of selling my own appartment and I had to depart from it for the new owner to move in. Meanwhile the transaction process was temporarily frozen due to the restriction measures, so I had to spend all that time in the city as a tourist. I only got two pairs of shoes and a suitcase with some clothes because all my belongings were stored in a warehouse. At the beginning of the restriction measures there were moments I was really frustrated but there were also moments I enjoyed the wonderful walks on the hill of Philopappos as my temporary ac-

commodation was in Koukaki area. As the days went by, I enjoyed more and more the fact that I was in a flat with very few belongings and the only things I could do these days were lonely walking on the hill and watching a tone of movies. I didn’t even have any drawing equipment so I couldn’t do any painting. Therefore I started writing notes, and I wrote some poems as well. The project I made for the open call to space 52 became digital as I had no equipment with me other than my laptop. This work captures the word HELP in braille language. I used pictures of pills replacing the embossed dots on the braille language. Each pill will be printed on aluminum and placed on the wall in aproximatelly 20 cm in diameter. I cried for “HELP” as I was so anxious. In the lonely state of restraint, I experienced both the sadness of ending a brief affair and the anxiety about the processes of selling my apartment and buying a new one, because if something went wrong I ‘d have no property at all. But in the end everything turned out fine.

H e l p , i n s t a l l a t i o n v i e w, E a c h p i l l w i l l b e p r i n t e d o n a l u m i n u m a n d placed on the wall in approximately 20 cm in diameter

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Dan Perjovschi

The time of the virus, Series, ephemeral works with permanent markers

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Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the situation? I live in Bucharest and Sibiu Romania (lockdown in Sibiu now) You can choose from these drawings one or all of them. can I help? Dan

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Lea Petrou

2802202030042020, 2020

63 prints, rubber stamp, black ink, table napkin. My name is Lea Petrou, I am Greek, I live in Athens and my job got closed down by eody on the 28th of February. I spent the quarantine days at my flat in Chalandri, Athens. Days got a new and unknown rhythm since then. This 2-month period felt very condensed, yet I have developed a totally different sense of time and invented new ways to expend it throughout the day.

The piece titled â&#x20AC;&#x153;2802202030042020â&#x20AC;? is a print I made using a date stamp depicting every single day from the 28th of February until the 30th of April 2020, the time between the beginning of my enclosure and the deadline of this open call. The dates on the folded table napkin are printed one on top of each other, being no longer readable yet becoming one structure, forming this set of time as an entirety.

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Miquel Ponce

I am at my house, on the outskirts of Valencia (Spain). Fortunately, it is a large house surrounded by nature, so you can breathe a lot of tranquility. The days have been quite rainy and cloudy during the time we have been closed, which is rare in this area, where there is always a clear sky with vibrant light. The days become monotonous and repetitive, I try to distract myself, luckily I have the studio, where I usually go daily to continue working on some projects that have now been delayed. Despite this, it is quite difficult to get into the usual rhythm of work. I have also taken the opportunity

to disconnect, play some instruments that I never have the time to play, discover new music, and read some books that already had too much dust on them. It seems that the day when we can go out is getting closer, but everyone says that nothing will be the same, and that this strange situation will accompany us for a while. I just hope all of this makes us rethink how we act with each other and with our planet.

Untitled, Acrylic paint on canvas. 73 x 60 cm

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John Sachpazis Coming from Athens (GR) I have been living in London (UK) since September 2019. At the beginning of March, I moved to a new flat with my partner and, so, this is where we have been quarantining together. The current social distancing experience brings mixed feelings and this can be seen in my recent works.On the one hand, there is a kind of grief and intense concern. Our everyday habits change, new ones appear and get normalised in a somewhat harsh and unprecedented way for most of us. How deep will the quarantine trauma be after this? How will human contact change on emotional, physical and digital levels? On the other hand, isolation gave me the time to focus on my artistic practice and expression, since I am sketching and painting on an almost daily basis. I also find myself exploring several readings which have long been delayed.Nevertheless, as I create my watercolour images I can’t avoid being concerned with the effect(s) that this domestic enclosure will bring to human relationships. The way we perceive freedom changes as it takes on new meanings and forms.

The house, despite being a symbol of privacy and security, becomes a kind of soft prison.I locate my art practice on concepts around fluidity and constant bodily becoming. The painting ‘I spend the spring inside’ moves between figurative and abstract depictions as a result of the relational game between unconscious intuition and daily experience of the indoors and outdoors during the quarantine. At first glance, the playful strokes of the brush emerge through the mixing of colours as an analogy to the emotional confusion of an imposed ‘voluntary’ confinement and the somewhat lost colourful images of a season that is not experienced by the urbanely isolated body. Since we have no garden to plant flowers, they end up growing roots on paper. The body becomes a spring flower and it integrates to its container, the house. It almost seems that during quarantine homes do not exist for humans anymore, but rather people exist in favour of the houses. Let’s not forget how a smile of hope always keeps us alive and free.

Watercolour on 250g paper â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 19.7x32cm

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Georgia Sagri

My name is Georgia Sagri and I am an artist based in Athens. I feel grateful that I haven’t been sick yet and extremely happy that I am able to submit a sample of my work during these difficult times. During the isolation I wasn’t able to visit my studio and artists run space ΥΛΗ[[matter]HYLE (hyle.gr) but I was able to organize and continue the oneto- one sessions with the participants of my ongoing performance-based, research practice IASI (recovery), using video calls and email correspondences. It is very tough to maintain the tempo during treatments that need the presence of one another, but still I do try to keep a tempo and to bring vividness and to blur the distance’s barriers. Starting as my need to recover from physically and mentally demanding performance pieces, IASI

gradually became a research practice on the physiological and pathological conditions of the body in the globalized society, doomed to autoimmune illnesses, stress, discomfort, asthma, insomnia, panic attack, anxiety, fatigue, nausea, food disorder, mania, paranoia, arthritis, depression, addiction, to name some. From January 2020 and until January 2021 three different cities will have hosted “IASI”; London (Mimosa House), Athens (TAVROS and ΎΛΗ[matter]HYLE) and Amsterdam (De Appel). With my work I seek to commit to the public and to continue my practice,

Breathing 5_1_5, 2020.

beyond the time and space limitations, that derive from the stress of displaying within an exhibition’s calendar. The nature of my research itself distinguishes research-creation from more conventional, tried-and-tested methodologies. Moving away from the spectacle and the event-based structure allows me to build upon an ongoing practice, where the word treatment derives from. The treatments shape the practice, that is ”IASI” (recovery) through an ongoing creative process. I hope my proposal and my work will bring you good energy as well as to everyone who is going to experience

the exhibition. Attached is an article of mine, published online on April 8th and while I was in isolation for about 30 days alone in my apartment, in the centre of Athens. In the article I share my thoughts and feelings about the pandemic in an intimate personal way that it opens to social and general concerns that involve all of us. I would like to submit the article https://www.space52.gr/wp-content/ uploads/Georgia-Sagri.pdf as my work together with one photos of the work I have recently presented at Mimosa House in London, titled Breathing 5_1_5, 2020. Thank you for your consideration

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Sissy Schneider

E x h i b i t i o n

The state of emergency caused by COVID-19 has been up here in Germany now for almost a month. Someone described it as eternal Sunday. I think that‘s a good fit. Although I really like being at home and alone, something is strange. It is not clear how to proceed. Although I was actually quite productive after watching Netflix for the first two weeks, I think I could or should have done more during that time. That I could use it better. But that is probably the neo-liberal dictate of utility that is digging into my head. I made clay

objects that look like abstract children‘s toys or a miniature city. I remember endless Sundays as a child on which I built my own world with Lego and Playmobil and disappeared into it accompanied by marvel, without any sense of time. Someone else described the current situation as a syncope of everyday life. I also find this metaphor nice and fitting, although for many people it probably doesn‘t feel like a syncope or a hiccup, but rather like the eternal Sunday. The pizza supplier wished me a nice weekend on Monday.

“Eternal Sunday”, 12 clay pieces, ongoing process, sizes vary - the average height is about 15 - 20 cm.

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Octavi Serra

These days are getting weird. I am from Girona, a small city in the north of Catalonia (Spain) but I spend the quarantine alone in Barcelona. I am on a 100m2 apartment that I share with two friends. However, these days, they are gone and left me alone. At first I had doubts about how many days I would be alone but with 3 weeks of confinement I can say that I enjoy it a lot. I read, make bread, exercise and sleep a lot, nothing special. However, I am also creating small interventions for the objects around me. I have built new roommates with cups and books, for example. I think this virus has been devastating but it has also given us a much needed break. A pause that allows us to reflect on what we are and want to do. It helps us better understand our life and allows us to redirect it. It is an unexpected

pause that has made us realize the exasperating stress and utilitarian production that comes with living in this society. We have many things to change and maybe this is a good time to start implementing these changes. Barcelona-based artist, designer and photographer Octavi Serraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is centered around capturing the ironies, truisms, and frustrations of modern life. Optical illusions and waste products are presented in public spaces and then photographed as part of an engaging philosophical series. The Spanish artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s liberal work is a sign of the times, and a reaction to the dissatisfaction with the cur-

Covid series, llibres

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Covid series, cadirasofa

rent social landscape. Serra builds conceptual installations that both poke fun at current culture, and question with much seriousness, the status quo: each image portrays a message about some type of sociopolitical issue. Be it surveillance, greed, corruption, environmental destruction, egoism, technology, or consumerism, no stone is left unturned. The donut tempting you to ‘Just Do It’ with its infamous Nike tick, a clock portraying the obsession with spending all of our time

at work, or encouraging the viewer to literally leave their doubts in the garbage bin, are some examples of this portrayal. Whatever the aspect, Serra’s sense of disillusionment is apparent. In a recent interview, he warns: “They have sold us a base pattern to live in the world, [and] if we do not make an effort to overcome it or change it, it’s easy to end up looking like automata”.

Covid series, CABALLET

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Christine Sgouromiti

51 days of quarantine SURVIVAL KIT PART 1: registrations 22/3 Clouds pass, the sky doesn’t change 8/4 Clichés. Can’t work. Musicians have all the fun. How to establish an artists’ community in quarantine time 11/4 Mask, sneakers, plants, needle and thread. Infinite circular movements. Knitting ex-votos. 16/4 Sheik Yerbouti, cops in my sleep, reading about war in Afganistan. Performing realness PART 2: practice - Holy walking shoes (aluminum, polisher, inscription) - Sun capsule (medical id necklace, gelatin c-print)

- Ahimsa t-shirt (metal mesh, silk thread) Ahimsa in sanskrit language means non-violence: Throughout those days of compulsory social alienanation, shock provocation, bio politics and bio power in the age of globalization, I discovered that non-violence is a precious, often unattainable asset. It is also quite complicated to achieve. It refers to protection, not against someone, but towards oneself, a kind of inner quietness that allows the senses to become extremely receptive. Ahimsa is practice. Objects of everyday life, stripped of their commodity value, are transferred to fetiches. They are assemblages charged with the tutelary power of my own vulnerability.

Sun capsule (medical id necklace, gelatin c-print)

Holy walking shoes (aluminum, p o l i s h e r, i n s c r i p t i o n )

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George Stamatakis

Everything happened so fast, to remind us how weak we are in front of the unknown that causes fear and how alone. I guess humanity has faced this before. Absolutely nothing changed in my personal routine, my democracy and freedom have been trampled unconsciously before, but as far as my relationship with the people that surround me I have only one thing to note, that the new era has maybe already started and we have to face it bravely if it brings the new reality.

E x h i b i t i o n

All Alone, 28x20cm, oil on canvas

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Sebastian Sochan

My life under quarantine has been challenging and limiting in terms of making artwork. I live in West London and our official lockdown has happened nearly 5 weeks ago. I have a studio based in Deptford (the other side of London) and so I haven’t been able to go back there since. I didn’t have much time to prepare anything as the studio was also placed under lockdown and the only things I managed to collect was my tufting equipment and limited amounts of yarn. My main practice usually involves making large sculptures using messy and hands on processes, which hasn’t been possible to do in my own house. I have had to adapt my thinking and making process, mainly descaling and limiting the amount of materials I use. The only thing available to me is some drawing materials, oil pas-

tels, sketchbook, tufting materials and a sewing machine. I chose to use this time to focus on developing my tufting skills, something that is important in my practice but I usually don’t have enough time to make. I’ve planned a small edition of 12 small rugs where I wanted to focus on using loose minimal lines and small shapes to determine the overall composition of the rugs. I then wanted to bring them more to life so on my daily exercise walks; I photographed them with fallen cherry blossoms and shadows I encountered. There is something so romantic about such a fleeting moment you can catch only once a year.

Hand tufted axminster yarn, 46x32 cm

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Adonis Stoantzikis

I measure freedom by sms for emergency exit. I measure time by Netflix episodes. I measure kilometers from room to room. I wish I could measure season changes by cloth changing but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m stuck to my pajamas. My paintings are fragments of narratives and dreams through which I explore how painting generates ideas, maintains associations, and evokes emotional reactions at the viewer. Using collage language as a key step towards the final composition of a painting, I research the relationships between personal and collective memory as well as the relationships between structures and their content. At the same time, I seek to develop a work which carries unsaid contents, is open to various

interpretations, and embodies multiple meanings. The material I find plays an essential role in my process before I begin to paint I create a composite image from online photos, social media, personal archives, as well as historical material and vintage porn films. This use of the collage process allows me to digitally play with composition. The results are figurative paintings with surreal structures that lie somewhere between reality and the subconscious, which are simultaneously hiding and revealing its actors.

Odds and ends, 2020, oil on canvas, 90x65cm

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Anne Cecile Surga

I have been quite privileged during the quarantine: I am based in the Pyrenean Mountain in France; it is a picturesque area with lot of nature. I have a garden and my atelier is in my basement. I had enough marble blocs to keep on working on my projects and I could follow the timeline and production as scheduled if the quarantine did not happen. My main troubles came from the fact all my tools broke down one after another in this period, and I could not get them repaired as fast or easily as I could in normal time. I had to learn how to repair some and for the others I am using some old tools I kept. They are not exactly adapted to my practice so I am losing a lot in terms of efficiency and easiness of the work, but I can still work which is the most important. On a personal level, I had up and downs during quarantine, mainly due to

my tools situation and living in a closed community. But I am now doing well, spending less time on social media has drastically improved the experience. I saw the humanity going down in this time, between the need to find a scapegoat, racism and way more sarcasm than I could take (as a French sarcasm is my main language, but it was too much even for me). I think to be really creative or relevant, people need to be able to take some distance from a situation, and I saw everybody going head down on the matter without critical thinking and it bored me. I personally tried to stay away from the chaos in order not to make the situation worse. But it was a difficult time for everybody, so I will be tolerant. I personally prefer to be part of the renewal and positive enterprises that emerged out of this difficult time.

Brazen, Statuario Carrara Marble, 20 x 17 x 17 cm

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Jon Thomas

I am from Swansea which is on the SouthWales coast. As I write this on April 14th 2020 we are in ‘lock down’. Since I started sculpting in 2017 my studio has been part of our home and a major part of my life. I am very lucky that I can still continue my practice. Other artists are trapped at home. We have a five year old daughter. I am responsible for her whilst school is closed during the day. At night I work in my garage like I always have, I have learned to work quickly. I try to remain positive, I continue to push forward. As long as I have my family & practice to focus on I will get through this. I am one of the fortunate ones.

‘T 1.0’ man-made sculpture (2020), Civilization series, 60 x 45 x 17 cm, EPS, acrylic sheet, paint, plywood board

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Mature topography series, 30x40 cm, origami

Giorgos Tserionis Throughout self-isolation, art has nonetheless been flourishing. Pointing to artists tapping into their creativity to relay health guidelines and share messages of hope - as well as neighbors singing to each other on balconies, and concerts online. The pandemic has accelerated changes that were already taking shape. Audiences have proliferated globally . . . many already

couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t visit our physical locations. Today, we have found ourselves in a world where we can either retreat in fear or connect and move forward digitally. This period will redesign the way the art world works. Probably fewer fairs, at least physical ones, and the rise of online initiatives as audiences get comfortable with consuming culture online. We see room for both the physical and the virtual.

Mature topography series, 30x40 cm, origami

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Vickie Vainionpää

I am currently in Montréal, quarantining in my apartment. At the beginning of the lockdown, I was finding it intensely difficult to focus, let alone create. I felt the crisis deeply and my psyche would not allow me to make artwork for a good few weeks. Instead I felt the need to help through more urgent and direct action, so I started a fundraiser for my local creative community. I was not the only one who had lost work because of the pandemic. Many were suffering. Our team managed to help around 20 artists with micro grants of $100 each. It wasn’t much, but it felt good to take some concrete action. Soon after, our Canadian government announced its financial relief package and we all collectively

exhaled. The second portion of my quarantine has been more of a return to normal working habits. Right before the pandemic, I had exhibited a new body of work at AVE Gallery here in Montreal. So I am using this extra time to reflect back on that work, and determine which direction my next show should go. It’s nice to slow down. My next exhibition is scheduled for Spring 2021 in Paris at Galerie Sabine Bayasli, and I am very hopeful that it will remain as planned. I think that I want the new works to centre around meditative

Soft Body Dynamics 20, 50” x 64”, Oil on linen

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Qu ara n t i n e

technological practices. Slowing down, through and with technology. I have lots of research still to do, but in the meantime I am working on paintings and drawings. An orb-like shape has started to appear in a few works, it has a calming effect. I’m also thinking about how mother nature is revitalizing herself in our absence. In the middle of the city we can now see the stars in the clear night sky. The air feels more pure, there are less cars mucking about. If we take one thing away from this experience, I hope it is to be more mindful of the impact we have on the planet. Some of the political parties here are pushing for a clean energy transition instead of giving bailouts to the oil companies. Now is the time to make the change, but I’m not so sure that will happen... I’ve never watched so much news in my entire life

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than I have in quarantine. Overall, my experience has really been a roller coaster, mentally, artistically, emotionally. I’m not sure what the world will look like after this, and it scares me. I do know, however, that as artists, we have a duty to reimagine the future. It’s exciting to see the possibilities that lay ahead of us and I’m hopeful that positivity and compassion will continue to reign.

Soft Body Dynamics 21 30” x 38” Oil on linen

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Wassili WIdmer 2020, what an unfulfilling year. I was born and raised in Switzerland, but recently lived in Glasgow. After the Christmas holidays in Switzerland I returned to Glasgow to prepare a project that will take place in April. Switzerland was the second country after Italy to be severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, I knew 1-2 weeks ahead of my environment in the UK what to expect. Pretty desperately I tried to warn my surroundings through social media, but since the British government and the mass media did not seem to take the pandemics seriously, there was not much affection. Like many foreign friends of mine, I did not initially want to leave Glasgow, but the seriousness of the situation forced me to make decisions that had to be taken quickly and consistently. After my flatmate and landlord had an anxiety attack and decided to leave, I was forced to do the same. Otherwise I would have had to

https://drive.google.com/ open?id=1Du5sf61tqWje_WuIUQvCePdmiPQtyEbv

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En passant, 18 min

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admit to a great financial risk. As my economic situation did not allow this at all, I decided to return to my parents’ house in the Swiss countryside. That’s is the place I spent my youth at. My parents are both artists, so the house is basically a big studio, located next to a river and a forest. It’s definitely one of the better places to spend the quarantine because there’s the possibility to go outside and a lot of space to work on art. Unfortunately the location also made social distancing very present to my life. I’ve only seen my parents and neighbours during the last 5 weeks. The monotony of everyday life became psychologically dominant, so I decided to change my way of making art. Instead of working primarily research based and questioning my creative ideas as I usually did, I started to follow my creative intuition. This was a way to break out of the daily routine, as creative impulses threw me into unexpected and exciting situations.

Artist: Federico Alcaro, Islam Allam, Fotios Balas, Xaris Baskozos, Guilhe Vince Briffa, Heimir Bjรถrgulfsson, Pelle Cass, Othonas Charala Katerina Christidi, Dionisis Christo Kim Engelen, Sergio Femar, Fra Eleonora Geortsiaki, Prodromos Maria Ikonomopoulou, Ids_art.drone. Stelios Karamanolis, Panagiotis Karam Giorgos Kontis, Georgia Kotretsos, Ugo Li, lom-of-LaMa, Alex Lysak Nikoฯ Mainaris, Andreas Mallouri Melina Fakitsa Mosland, Yuto Ne Ilias Papailiakis, Andreas Dan Perjovschi, Lea Petrou, Georgia Sagri, Sissy Schneider, George Stamatakis, Adonis Stoantzikis, Giorgos Tserionis, Vickie

Silvia Arenas and Guillem S. Arquer, erme Bergamini, Emmanouil Bitsakis, Jacobo Bugarin, Chris Capten, ambous, Christina Chatziantoniou, ofilogiannis, DURA, Hannes Egger, ancesca Fini, Caspar de Gelmini, Haralampidis, Hugo Houayek, projects, Nikomachi Karakostanoglou, mbambas, Akis Karanos, Emilia Kina, Antonis Larios, Quentin Lefranc, kowski, Pantelis Vitaliotis Magneto, is, Zhang Miranda, Eva Mitala, emoto, Nocera&Ferri, Andrei Nutu, Papamichael, Dionisiοs Pappas, Miquel Ponce, John Sachpazis, Octavi Serra, Christina Sgouromiti, Sebastian Sochan, Anne Cecile Surga, Vainionpää. Wassili Wldmer.

space52, Kastorias 52, Athens 104 47, GREECE, h t t p s : / / w w w. s p a c e 5 2 . g r / , i n f o @ s p a c e 5 2 . g r T: + 3 0 6 9 7 7 0 4 1 6 3 4 | D i o n i s i s C h r i s t o f i l o g i a n n i s