October 20–December 3, 2023
The City of Athens Culture, Sports and Youth Organization (OPANDA) is proud to present the solo exhibition of Alexandros Georgiou at the City of Athens Art Gallery. The exhibition, titled “Three Continents, Three Friends: Drawings 1993-2023”, will run from October 20 to December 3, 2023, and will feature over 500 works on paper spanning Georgiou’s career from 1993 until the present day. This is the first time that the entirety of Georgiou’s imaginative work will be displayed. During the exhibition, the artist will conduct a mini workshop where he will create works by engaging in a dialogue with visitors.
The earliest drawings (1993-94) were made when Georgiou was still a student at the Athens School of Fine Arts. This unknown section, consisting of four major works, features animals, insects and human figures taken from an unwritten fairy tale. Painted on paper with a thick brush and black acrylic, Georgiou’s heroes could be seen as a freak show. They are frightening, heartbreaking and, in a strange way, erotic.
Most of the drawings were created on A4 paper after 2003. Most were painted between the artist’s travels in Asia, predominantly in Iran and India, from 2005 to 2017. They are drawings created “between the acts,” as Georgiou clarifies, thus referring to Virginia Woolf’s final novel, where all the action takes place during the intervals of a theatre performance. In Georgiou’s case, travel was the performance, and the drawings were the intermediate stops – creative pauses, far removed from stillness and inertia.
Georgiou’s artistic style has been greatly influenced by his travels, which is evident in the figures he draws. His drawings, found on islets in the galleries, depict genderless, childlike, anthropomorphic, and animal-like figures resembling Shiva’s followers from Varanasi. These figures represent Georgiou’s artistic family, and he affectionately refers to them as a “choir of fire and friends,” “fragile stars of three,” and a “journey with family.” Each drawing is accompanied by a title, which may provide an enlightening view of the exhibition’s text if combined with the rest. Georgiou’s works reflect values and ideals slowly disappearing, such as friendship, happiness, kindness, love, and peace.
In terms of production, Georgiou always tried to work with trivial means, and in this regard, it is no coincidence that he put a lot of emphasis on drawing. This may explain his interest in interactivity, the element of the unexpected and the process through which the work stems. The need for reunification characterizes the artistic work of Alexandros Georgiou, who, with this exhibition, seems to share the position of Simone Weil: “The good is the only source of the sacred”.
At the Rebecca Camhi Art Gallery, a solo exhibition titled “From the Perspective of Yes” will showcase the artist’s paintings, which will be created during the exhibition.
Visitor Portrait Workshop
During the exhibit, the artist will host a workshop on creating mental portraits of visitors using his unique technique. The workshop will take place Tuesday through Friday from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.
Alexandros Georgiou was born in Athens in 1972. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts in 1996 and later pursued his studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Georgiou’s artistic journey began with the Spring Collection ’96 exhibition at the House of Cyprus, organized by the DESTE Foundation. Since then, he has actively participated in numerous exhibitions in Greece and abroad, showcasing his exceptional works. His solo exhibitions include From the Perspective of Yes (2023) in the Rebecca Camhi art gallery, which takes place in parallel with his solo exhibition at the City of Athens Art Gallery, Prince with a Blue Crown meets the family in his body in the Rebecca Camhi art gallery, where he presented for the first time paintings of the period 2017-2021, Empress and Spirits (2022) at the Zina Athanasiadou Gallery, PostGods at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in 2017, where he presented the two pilgrimage journeys-projects Char Dham (2014) and Maha Shakti Pitha (2016-17), based on Hinduism, Without My Own Vehicle I-V (2012) at National Museum of Contemporary Art, where he presented his first five travel-projects.
Exhibition curator: Christoforos Marinos, art historian, curator of exhibitions and events of OPANDA
High resolution photos can be downloaded here.
Exhibition opening date: Friday, October 20, 2023, 18:00-22:00
Duration: October 20–November 3, 2023
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11:00 – 19:00, Sunday 10:00 – 16:00. The exhibition will remain closed on Mondays.
Free admission.
City of Athens Art Gallery:
Building A, Myllerou & Germanikou Streets, Avdi Square, Metaxourgeio
Information: 210 5202420 | www.opanda.gr