ΟPANDA, presents, from 23 April to 1 June 2025 at the City of Athens Arts Centre, the exhibition “Confusion” by George Xenos.
At a time when the individual, either as a simple subject or as a citizen, societies and the whole of humanity are experiencing cosmogenic changes, the exhibition by George Xenos entitled “Confusion” is more relevant than ever. Through the particular aesthetic power of his works, he demonstrates to us the inexorable fate of the human spiritual and mental condition.
The exhibition is structured in three sections, consisting of the installations “Confusion”, “Diodos” and ‘Pause’, which form a path of transition towards confusion and constitute, as he says, “the recording of a meteoric moment in global civilisation”.
The “Diodos” and the Passers-by that introduce the viewer to the exhibition are the visual metonymy of the concept of movement, which nowadays is a condition of society’s fallible planning: a constant movement of populations and information that intensifies confusion and uncertainty. It is the passage that simultaneously creates the dilemma of passage, a passage that contributes to global confusion, as it is the passage from symbolic thought and expression to digital reconstruction and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The polyptych “Pause” shows precisely the reaction, the protest, but also the opposing voices that vibrate with a global pause in the public sphere. Here, a unity of asymmetry and dissonance, an essential disharmony, is constituted, as the notes and voices in the scores are not in tune with the main theme, but are instead mediated by the will and principle of an all-powerful conductor. At the same time, they are, as a score, the guarantee of audiovisual memory, the trace of an attempt to express–and through musical and poetic harmony–the transcendence that allows for coexistence. Central to the exhibition is the installation of “Confusion”, in which Xenos’ conceptual orchestration culminates (and concludes).
The collapse of different views and worldviews, made up of messy, disjointed words and asymptotic opinions, just like the conflicting terms and codes in conferences and councils, in the end sow confusion and remove the possibility of a decision. The image of the final dissolution is an ‘ending’ in the dual sense of the term: both a fait accompli and a milestone, as a ‘passage’ to something else, a restart. Final dissolution in Xenos is not an ending, it is the possibility of a new beginning because everything remains open, even when destroyed it leaves a trace and a shadow.
The above installations are complemented by works that deal with the trace, the image, writing, culture, subjects that the artist has been researching for decades.
“The trace, as a timeless value”, he says, “with human existence as its central axis, develops a dialectic, bringing the artistic product to its true dimension and significance. The glow of the trace, as a maximum possibility, coordinates the gaze and thought, leaving a shadow in the myth, a significant element of culture.”
The artist develops his subjects on large surfaces, mainly of paper, working with acrylics and ink, materials that give transparency and fluidity to his compositions.
George Xenos is an artist who thinks both inside and outside art, finding a dialectical relationship between the aesthetic categories of visual gesture and critical thinking about the things of the world, the psychic moods, language. His generous synthetic embrace of all categories and his abysmal view of the world manage to capture precisely that crucial moment that the fleeting and messy things of the world and the human mind usually let slip and get lost. But not for Xenos, who manages to freeze the event, to preserve its memory, to describe its trace. Most importantly, he preserves its historicity and maintains its dialecticity at the same time with reality and transcendence. A transcendence expressed through the impossibility of primarily dialogue and objection, the arbitrariness of the unpredictable, the absence of a decision, leaving everything open and unresolved. But at the same time they also constitute a passage, an “oudo” (threshold), an opportunity for a restart, which will also include memory, as a cerebral transcendence (Aufhebung) in which both the positive and the negative will coexist, realizing what C. Xenos so expressively formulates as “an oath to light and darkness”.
George Xenos was born in 1953 in Athens. From 1976 to 1982 he studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts – Section des Arts Plastiques in Paris. From 1983 to 1986 he lived and worked in Athens. From 1988 to 1992 he lived and worked in Berlin, where he experienced the historic events of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Works from this period were exhibited at the Winckelmann Museum in Stendal (June – October 1991) and at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (January – November 1992).
George Xenos is distinguished not only for his exhibitions in museums in Europe and our country, but also for the philosophical dimension of his work and its timeless perspective. His works interact with man, society, music and nature, highlighting the line, on a conceptual level, as a structural element of his painting and as an automatic emblematic entity. Since 1993 he has been living and working in Athens.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. George – Byron Davos, art critic and professor of Applied Aesthetics.
The opening of the exhibition will take place on Wednesday 23 April at 19:00.
Exhibition Duration: 23 April– 1 June 2025
Opening Hours: Tuesday- Friday 11:00 – 19:00 Saturday- Sunday 10:00 – 15:00, Mondays closed
The admission is free
City of Athens Art Centre
Vas. Sofias, Eleftherias Park, Metro stop: Concert Hall
Information: 210 7232604- 210 7224028
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