RADIUM PALACE
Please tell us a bit about yourself and how you are defining your work? Or in other words, if you needed to explain what you do to someone “outside” the art world, what is the essence it comes down to in your oeuvre and why?
. I am an artist, researcher and professional spectator who lives and works in Athens, Greece. I’m a looker, an observer and a gazer who seeks out opportunities and spaces for an idea to comfortably be wedged in between the two. Art history and humor is my medium.
Moments in the 3D that distort our unquestionable seen truth serve as the departure points of my creative adventures.
How do you personally define “wellness”, but also in terms of the collective?
Personally, I often disappear for long periods of time, I fall off the face of the earth in order to focus on something that interests me. By going silent, and following a very strict visual diet is what allows me to speak and see again afresh.
On a broader sense, it would do us all very good if we spend some time in the desert on our own.
If we talk about today’s artists creating and contributing healing spaces and works that can transform society and restricted mind sets…how can they reach the collective that is not aware of being a collective?
Can we heal each other? Am I the one to do it?
That is a super power, and God forbid you ever trusted me with your wellbeing.
Caring or better attending to the needs of others is not a sport I am taking lightly.
My best trick thus far has only been cracking a joke or occasionally making a joke hoping in return to hear the sound of laughter. You don’t have to go to school for that!
Different creative gestures, draw different groups of people.
We might as well let the sub-text of the viewer be the guiding force behind the experiences they seek.
The organic traffic of viewers within our institutions is changing and that is very hopeful.
The possibility of bringing people together again by realigning their attention to what matters to them is exciting and risqué at the same time.
We are the ones who also have to adjust, they are showing us a way outside the traditional institutional pantheon of the art world.
If anything, we have to heal from what we think is right for others.
Georgia Kotretsos, Scotch on the Holy Rocks,
That is a super power, and God forbid you ever trusted me with your wellbeing. Caring or better attending to the needs of others is not a sport I am taking lightly. My best trick thus far has only been cracking a joke or occasionally making a joke hoping in return to hear the sound of laughter. You don’t have to go to school for that!
Can you share how spending time and exhibiting on site on the island of Lesvos influenced you? (Mentally, physically, emotions, sensations.)?
Joy, pure joy.
There are very few curators, who have mastered as Nicolas Vamvouklis the skill of bringing out the best in everybody. We were collectively reminded of how life is like again. We arrived as acquaintances or total strangers and we left as friends.
We learned from one another and that process in itself had indeed healing properties.
Which work or approach of your fellow artists in this exhibition inspired you especially and why?
It was delightful to be showing my work with such exceptional peers.
For sure, the work by Maro Fasouli and Miltiadis Digkas resonates with me to this day. Maro is a superb craftsman of texture and textile. She creates narratives and fiction with form. Her work also served as the prelude of the RADIUM PALACE exhibition, a superb first act.
Miltiadis’ work was a photogenic delight, a radiant entanglement suspended from the ceiling, which added an otherworldly dimension to the show. A sophisticated gesture coming out effortlessly very early in his creative path. I am very curious how his work will involve in the future.
Overall, the genteel demeanor of my peers, their unapologetically eloquent humor and athletic stamina in everything we indulged in has left quite a lasting sweet aftertaste. My best to all!
Image: Maro Fasouli
Follow Georgia Kotretsos on Instagram
“RADIUM PALACE” Finissage: March 6, 2022 in Agia Paraskevi, Lesvos
K-Gold Temporary Gallery in co-organisation with the North Aegean Region curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis
