On Tuesday 4th of October -the World Day of Animals- at the Art Gallery “ASTROLAVOS dexameni” (Xanthippou 11, Kolonaki, tel: 210 7294342, 3, fax: 210 7293317, www.astrolavos.gr), opens a group exhibition entitled: “Depictions of Animals”.
In the exhibition that includes paintings, photographs, mixed technique works, manufactures and video, participate the artists: Vangelis Giokas, Giorgos Golfinos, Christina Kasapa, Ilias Kosintas, Magda Leventakou, Maria Maroudi, Kostas Bobos, Dimitris Mitaras, Christina Papageorgiou, Christina Papaskarlatou, Efi Paroutsa, Lakis Patraskidis, Eleni Pavlopoulou, Margarita Petrova, Giorgos Prassas, Anna Skarlatou, Alekos Fasianos and Manolis Haros.
The approach and depiction of animals by artists has always been interesting. From the Antiquity and Renaissance until nowadays, the forms of animals decorated murals, vessels, embossed – sculpture representations and paintings, either in individual forms or in combination with local elements and human forms. The ways with which artists have attributed through time different forms of animals vary. At times symbolic, realistic or abstractive, with larger or smaller freedom of the brush with more or less intense expressiveness and expressionistic approach, with diminution or enlargement of forms in proportion to the semantic value that the artist lends them, occasionally with humorous disposal or even with surrealism from observation or from memory; the forms of real or frequently fantastic animals in works of art, constitute a specific thematic unity.
A thematic unity that has always reflected and still reflects, on one hand the general trends of contemporary art and on the other hand the particularities between humans and animals.
It is very interesting to observe these fluctuations, changes and mirages of relations of the individual or of the sociopolitical total, through these works of art that represent either individual forms of animals or the relation between human beings and them. A relation that is at times friendly, fellow and symbiotic or operational and ‘hunter – prey’.
Naturally, the different works emit in the spectator sometimes sentiments of soft and calm, of peace and tender, while at the same time create scenes of worry and trigger the most violent instincts.
Duration until: 27th of October.