A stream of ghosts

Crux Galerie presents A stream of ghosts, a solo exhibition by Dimitris Rentoumis, featuring in situ installations from his latest series of works on paper. For the exhibition, Rentoumis draws on the notion of the spectrum, evoking both its symbolic and tautological functions. The word ‘spectrum’ does not just refer to the refraction of colors through a prism and the color wheel, it is also etymologically related to an otherworldly appearance, a ghostly apparition (spectre). Here, a ghostly ‘spectrum’ appears, haunting with its ambience the physical works while opening the door to multiple interpretations.

The works in the exhibition leverage the properties of paper to focus on the transient and fragile nature of painting as a medium. The repetitive layering and removal of paint, the straining and artificial reinforcement of the surface, as well as moisture penetrating the paper, test the limits of its endurance, giving it texture and substance. The resulting tears are organically integrated into the works, which fold back on themselves, evoking pieces of fabric rolls detached from a continuum and echoing familiar forms with a sense of temporality.

The historicity of previous attempts at expanded painting and the liberation of the canvas from the stretcher, rearticulated here through paper as a kind of corruption of the past, renders the exhibition open to a hauntological interpretation. Suspended and layered, these works lend themselves to a line of analysis that began with Jacques Derrida and continued into the 21st century with critics such as Mark Fisher, in which the future becomes difficult to see and the expectations of the past persist as a “spectre”, neither fully present nor entirely absent.

Dimitris Rentoumis (b. 1980) studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (2006–2011) and completed his Master of Fine Arts at the AKV St. Joost Academy in the Netherlands (2012–2014). He was awarded a research grant from the Mondriaan Fonds for the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2016–2017). He has participated in various artist residencies, including the Onassis AiR program as an exchange resident at the Beirut Art Residency (BAR) in Lebanon (2019–2020). He has co-organized a series of educational workshops at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the ALBA School of Visual Arts in Beirut, and the Vakalo Art and Design College in Athens. His work has been presented in many exhibitions both in Greece and abroad.