THE SEEKERS

Crux Galerie is happy to present the second solo exhibition of Anestis Ioannou, with the title The Seekers. The exhibition consists of works on paper and denim, video, and installation. In his new series of works, Ioannou explores Yiannis Tsarouchis’ costumes and set designs for The Birds by Aristophanes, directed by Karolos Koun in 1959, and for The Trojan Women that Tsarouchis himself directed in an outdoor parking lot on Kaplanon Street in 1977. He explores the allegorical dimensions of these works in search of a correspondence or response to contemporary urban trauma and urban life.

Most of the works function as a platform for a narrative that can be shared among “secondary characters”—objects, materials, and forms—and is expressed through materials related to the urban environment and the social fabric. Thus, the conventional painting surface of canvas is replaced by denim fabric, a material that has been associated with the constantly shifting urban life and youth culture.

The city’s street culture has been seamlessly integrated into his artistic practice. Ioannou understands skateboarding as a form of rebellion, based on the transitional state of a rider, who has no specific purpose or destination, yet carries a great deal of youthful energy and fully embraces the urban experience. The skaters in bird costumes do not take off, yet they long for flight, just as The Birds long for the utopian city. The challenge of gravity, the idea of attempting to escape, to take off, to remain in constant motion, is pivotal in the presented works.

“I am interested in the ‘translation’ mechanisms used by Tsarouchis, the way he synthesizes the past—whether historical or mythical—with the contemporary; or the way he narrates situations through the objects and spaces he paints, often adding a greater narrative significance to them than to his main characters.” Anestis Ioannou