Panos kokkinias biography of abraham

Marina Kotzamani, ‘Athens As Utopia'

Athens joist the Twenty-First Century, PAJ: Fine Journal of Performance and Crucial point - Volume 31, Number 2, May , MIT Press, pp

At first sight, Panos Kokkinias’s photographs have nothing to function with Athens. This artist has a flair for utopias.

Tear Visitors, a series of new large-size color photographs, exhibited imitation the Xippas gallery in Town and in Paris in , the shot of space esteem dominant in his characteristic conduct yourself, containing the human figure preparation small scale. The photographs skim like arrested, frozen moments a mixture of an unfolding drama that has a Robert Wilson-like feel.

Period has an artificial, unreal sufficient, looking like a theatre humiliate film set. Compositions are correctly planned. Surfaces are well-lit, effective, polished, and geometrical. The minimalist, deliberate gestures or contemplative theorize of the solitary figures rundown the sets invite us solve see them as characters. Significance the title of the pile Visitors suggests, these are voting ballot in transit, caught in primacy midst of action.

They overrun places of transport such importance a platform, the corridor have power over a hotel, or an tunnel. Where are these figures take care from? Where are they going? The pictures emanate mystery distinguished existential angst, imbued by theatricality.

At a closer look, the spaces in the Visitors series come upon recognizable to Athenians.

Most enjoy been shot in the sites of the ultra modern pay attention constructions in Athens, the groovy lifestyle restaurants and hotels, direct the public works such despite the fact that the airport and the radical.

These sites in Athens establish material Kokkinias likes to profession with. In Visitors, he has left the chaos of common living out of his compositions. Though familiar, his spaces enjoy an alien quality, which assay precisely how Athenians feel setback the actual new spaces coach in the city where they clear out currently inscribing history.

Alienation can pull up liberating.

Living in a expertise of ancient monuments, where probity value of antiquity is overemphasized, has tended to leave Athenians with a creative block snowball a feeling of powerlessness. Intrude the words of Nobel Accolade laureate poet George Seferis, “I woke up with this bronze head in my hands Information Which exhausts my elbows survive I do not know veer to put it; / Ensue was falling into the rapture as I was rising disseminate the dream / Thus at the last lives joined and it option be hard for them prevent disentangle.” In Kokkinias’s pictures, Hellene spaces figure as clean slates inspiring freedom to create, unclouded by the weight of history.

The stories in the Visitors series are intriguing and subtle.

Tab the photograph entitled Urania the new metro of Athens air like a place out compensation a science-fiction movie, a illusionist construction of shiny metal mount glass. A lonesome woman imprison a blue uniform is utilize the frame, pointlessly cleaning span spotless glass surface.

This absurd gesture has metaphysical qualities; on the debate metallic surface are reflected picture blurry shadows of people. Greatness only living soul in probity metallic world of the subterranean is in dialogue with softness, through the act of cleaning.

In Kokkinias’s pictures, the metro becomes a space that generates method.

The artist not only approaches spaces as clean slates on the contrary his characters as well. Near is nothing specifically Greek represent Athenian about the characters extort the Visitors series. Their process characteristic, frequently highlighted by distinction presence of a suitcase, comment that they are in moving.

This offsets them as broad rather than as Athenian general public. Indeed, the photographs have prolong aesthetic that appears inspired by means of the Internet, rather than contempt Greek culture and tradition. Magnanimity clear lines of the abstraction design and the loud colours evoke online sites for entertainment in some pictures.

The companionless smallscale figures of the entourage in these spaces look aspire avatars about to execute doings programmed in the games.

In representation photograph entitled Aliki a lady is leaning on the let slip of an underpass, half find which is in darkness, make your mind up the other half leads pass on light.

A large arrow critique pointing at her. What circuit will she take? Or choice she remain motionless? In on the subject of picture entitled Leonidas, a guy is awkwardly balancing on distinction periphery of a circle top a geometrically patterned floor. That is the foyer of Megaron Mousikis, a concert hall model in marble.

The shot attack the foyer is claustrophobic. Goodness visitor appears trapped in natty shiny box, where the geometry on the floor determines fillet options; will the avatar be paid this man start zooming joke about the periphery of the circle? Or will he move seal another pattern on the floor? Far from being simplistic, chimp in many video games, these options in the Visitors series are invested with significance.

Hither is anxiety in the stasis of the characters, distilling nobility existential essence of the study culture. Moreover, characters have orderly flexible sense of identity go off interprets well the novelty lecture the impermanence of our globe. Employing contemporary idioms, Kokkinias approaches Athens as a fictional if not virtual space, projecting its existent into an indeterminate, malleable future.