Concrete: Group Exhibition by Braggart Gallery at Telloglio Foundation

The exhibition “concrete” will run until November 24 and will take place on its 2nd floor Telloglio Foundation.

In the literary work “Beton”, by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhardt, the protagonist, named Rudolph, experiences an confinement that is mostly psychological and symbolic. It is an endless and dead-end internal monologue of the protagonist who has been trying for over ten years to write the most important work of his life. His efforts to start his work and find the “first phrase” are constantly thwarted by the constant emergence of internal barriers to automation and by the “anti-spiritual environment” in which he lives. Every day, he anxiously searches to “detect” the “right” conditions under which he will finally begin his work and integrate into it a wealth of information that he has painstakingly collected for over ten years. He tries in vain, however, since this undiscovered creativity and his intellectually barren environment haunt him every day. “Concrete” is a rigid, inert, dead-end, immutable, undifferentiated, impenetrable and fixed condition, which formed and constitutes its “anti-spiritual environment”. This is for him indifferent and under inertia, obtuseness, stagnation and hypocrisy, and triggers the impenetrable confinement of the protagonist in himself. He is constantly and anxiously trying to stand up to the “Concrete” with which he is constantly fighting and finally to “crush” it.

On the occasion of the literary work “Concrete”, the artists in an attempt to “wear the shoes” of Rudolph (protagonist), as “Other Rudolphs”, elaborate with their personal visual “language” the “Concrete” of their own personality. Through the installation, photography, sculpture and painting, they materialize and symbolize their inner monologue arising from the confinements that trigger and feed for everyone the project “Concrete”.

Aspects and aspects of the work that run through and emerge in the works of the artists are the various impasses and confinements that result from the persistent imperviousness of the condition that constitutes “Concrete”, i.e. the prevalence of the environment that prevents and excludes the emergence of creative forces. Also, the condition in which the subject is ultimately confined to himself, as a result of his inability to transcend the “Concrete” that surrounds him, emerges as a central point. Thus, self-enclosure is also characterized as impenetrable and solid, characteristics that “Concrete” carries. These two poles that emerge and disappear in the “Concrete” (the internal condition and the environment) coexist and end up forming a Cartesian-type dualism. The subject is enclosed in himself as a “detached self” completely cut off from the surrounding context. The latter, as a system, is also enclosed and cut off from the “Rudolph-type” subjects it frames, presenting its own autonomy as another “detached self”. In this latter closed and self-sustaining autistic-type system, there are rational and deterministic laws and rules that guarantee and promise its coherence, continuity and validity. The shell of this ‘entity’ is of ‘Concrete’.

The once-ever “God” is secularized and embodies this worldly system-circuit of “spirit” and “progress”, which endlessly produces inclusions in its attempt to prevail as an eternal present. For this purpose he “recruits” the fields of “spirit”, “science”, in general “Word” and composes his form from “Concrete”. In this form he colonizes as a Sisyphean burden on “Rudolf’s” back. An eventual “crushing” of its solid form might require a tiny hole in the “Concrete” shell. Maybe “Rudolf” for his whole life is looking for this hole, maybe this is the Meaning of his existence, this first “unfound phrase”, the Meaning that is constantly postponed. However, he repeatedly and unexpectedly comes face to face with “Concrete”, i.e. with its Annihilation and its collapse.

Participating artists: Thodoris Angelopoulos, Stergios Adams, George Vikelidis, Evita Voudouris, Eleni Gatsiu, Theano Giannezis, Maria Zisopoulou, Iulitta Karamavrou, Haris Kontosfyris, Dimitris Palantzas, George Panagiotakis, George Symeonidis, Irini Sinegalia, Christos Triantaphyllou, Konstantinos Ts akiris, Haris Hilitsis, Sisqo Ndombe

Organization: BRAGGART gallery (Founded by Androniki Daskalou), www.braggart.gr, Papakiriazi & Skarlatou Soutsou, Center of Larisa

Text editing-idea conception: Iulitta Karamavrou

Topic photo: George Symeonidis (project detail)