People’s Spaces

Xenofon Bitsikas
Nantia Skordopoulou
Panos Charalambous
Vivetta Christouli

Theodoros Kosmopoulos vineyard, Tripotamos, Tinos

The exhibition People’s Spaces comprises four ‘psychogeographical landscapes’,
abstract interpretations of the notion of space developed in an expanded sense of the
vineyard’s place.
The medieval capital of Tinos, the Castle, built under Exomvourg’s granite rock,
has been the island’s fort against raid and attacks from the sea. Aegean sea, bearing
the double meaning of the Border and the Bridge, consists even today, the transitive
‘non place’ of the refugees, concurrently a death passage and a lifeline, the symbol of
a starting point. Between them, Theodoros’ Kosmopoulos’ vineyard, planted in two
stone terraces around an old threshing floor, witnesses the primary relationship
between people and earth and signals a place of euphoria and culture.
People’s Spaces calls the viewers in an active participative response in the experience
of works of art that propose a mixture of moments of memory and antithetical but
interconnected notions of space: a place of euphoria and culture: the vineyard, a
place of defense: the castle, the intermediate space of separation and
communication: the sea.
OPENING: 29/07/2022 στις 19:00
DURATION: 29/07/2022 έως 04/09/2022
OPENING HOURS: 5:30 -20:00, daily except Tuesday
Curating, Organization: SymPas Art

XENOPHON BITTSIKAS, 2022_Dionysos_drinking rules, (Mixed materials, variable dimensions)

Reference to Velázquez’s work “El triunfo de Baco” 1628 – 1629 or “Los borrachos”, as recorded as a typical title by the Spanish people. A work with signifying ambiguity and many interpretations. One of the many; Dionysian beyond the festive (associated with wine and loss of temperance) is also associated with disorder and chaos, to which if we associate the political and social decline and crisis that characterized the country at the time, it leaves the work to be appreciated as the symbol of an era.

NADIA SCORDOPOULOU, Fragments of history

This is an artistic installation in the vineyard of Theodoros Kosmopoulos on the imposing rock of Exomvourgo in Tinos. An island that is deeply connected with Smyrna, as for a whole century, until 1922, the Greeks of Smyrna and other Asia Minor regions gathered by the thousands every year on 25 March at the Tinos festival, with direct routes to the island. The combination of a religious festival and a national anniversary brought the two places and their people together, sharing customs, traditions, symbolism, music and practices such as in viticulture. The work presents the connection between places and people, but also their displacement and separation, while the materials chosen, the white marble slabs, partially gilded, are materials found in both ancient Greek and Byzantine culture. They are placed in a special arrangement on the ground between the vineyard.

PANOS CHARALABOUS, Aquis Submersus 2008-2014, (HDVideo with sound DUR 3min 8 sec)

On the surface of Lake Amvrakia , among thousands of floating vinyl records,

floating electrophones … emit the voices of dead singers ( M. Callas, D. Stratos, T. Karnavas ) portraits ”Aquis Submersus”…

The video image is placed frontally towards the sea… the croaking of Alcyona attracts the seabirds…

BIVETTA CHRISTOLI, Solid Sea 2022, (Glass mirrors, rescue blankets, 120X200cm)

The tight structure of the terrace spreads out on the ground. Limited. Instead of stones, broken mirrors reflect moving images of the sky, shifting the blue of the sea to the vineyard.

In the 1922 Smyrna disaster ‘…the sea was full of so many corpses that if you fell into the water you wouldn’t sink…’

The Solid Sea is cut by rescue blankets. In visual contact with the sea, it stands as an anti-monument to ‘exorcise’ with its paradoxical ‘beauty’ the drama of refugees of all times.