The Argo Gallery welcomes to its premises Petros Zoumboulakis, who will present his new work with paintings, under the general title “introversion in a small format”, which will be inaugurated on Wednesday, February 15 at 7 p.m. and will last until March 11, 2023.

On this report by Petros Zoumboulakis, Manos Stefanidis, highlights among other things:

« […] The last section now presented are the compositions that Zoumboulakis created during the period of the crisis, during the era of the coronavirus, but also during those years when all the rest of us were preparing to celebrate, as we could and as long as the conditions allowed, the 200 years since the National Rebirth. But also to honor the 100 years since a great, national disaster, since in Greek history triumph and debacle often go hand in hand… this was the climate in which the artist created the unity on the subject of alcohol. And this is of great importance, both substantial and symbolic. […] Zoumboulakis grows older, becomes more acute expressively, the more he utilizes his subcutaneous humor and observability. I think that the paintings created in recent years reveal another Zoumboulakis, elegant as well as deep, graceful as well as essential, master as well as exposed to the unexpected and the wrong. In other words, in this case, Zoumboulakis experimented off the beaten track and away from the certainties of his technique. And this happened mainly because this particular issue roused him existentially to summarize all his achievements so far and to move forward. I think that the deeper content of this section is the joy and the risk of life, the night, the adventure, alcohol as a constant escape, love and the fatal disappointment from its end … moreover loneliness, the fear of death and the mocking view of human beings. Of human folly that only a glass of wine can punish. That is, the philosophy, the fun and the madness that can arise in front of a glass of wine. […] From the absinthe of the early Impressionists and Picasso to the champagnes and cognac of Toulouse Lautrec and Matisse, from the cabarets of Montmartre to the taverns of Arles, and from interwar Berlin to the baroque squares of Rome, the artists of Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, nanny seem to mix their colours with alcohol and imbue their inspiration and ideas with pure match. It is the alcohol of despair, forgetfulness and forgiveness but also of subversion or revolution. The alcohol of hope. Zoumboulakis records solitary figures in bars musing like Van Gogh in his famous cafe, about suicide or madness … […]»

Speaking of his work, Petros Zoumboulakis tells us:

[…] “The crisis (crises?) and its multiple consequences over time” fueled ” this theme of mine. I have always been prone to the social commentary that “imperceptibly” entered my work, or rather some phases of it.

Living a whole life in a city like Athens, you can’t avoid it. He forces you and blackmails you to get him out, he does not leave you indifferent, no matter how much you want to do pure painting. It is a city thematically rich and exuberant.

This work, therefore, is about drink, an “institution” that is ancient, a temporary consolation and a temporary refuge until it becomes permanent, definitive and pernicious, but we owe a lot to it, our spiritual civilization owes a lot to it…(suffice it to think how much poorer it would have been without it ….his contribution). My little installation, representation better, remembrance of my tenure at the theatre is.

Vintage and Retro have always fascinated and moved me and I wanted to represent them with realism and precision. The” authentic “costumes (based on their photographs) and the” environment “of the two great painters Lautrec and Modigliani with arbitrary anachronism, since they did not coexist, as well as the figures of our familiar and famous” drunkards”(oenoflyges), let it be a small libation to their spirit, to their work, to their memory…”