Touch me, touch me, don’t be shy - 2023 - sandpaper on zinc, concrete primer, bird deterrent reflective tape, vibration motors, cables and batteries - 70x50x3 cm

Closer to a Sustained Caress: Contemporary Readings of Printmaking
Group exhibition, co-curated by Evagoras Vanezis & Nicola Mitropoulou
Hambis Municipal Printmaking Museum, Nicosia / 23 September 2023 - 15 March 2024

Composed of a carved surface and vibration mechanism, the work comments on the simultaneity of lust and repulsion towards the unknown and the unclear. Athough it reminds one of a mirror, the material used denies reflection. The sound of vibration, familiar to us through mobile phones, brings to mind moments of connection and communication, whilst the use of bird deterrent tape reminds of all the ways in which distance is created and contact suppressed. The reflective quality of the tape and the mirror-like surface form an uneasy alliance, confronting the viewer with the demand of looking both inward and outward.

How Have We Gone Away from What Keeps Us Alive - 2023 - stainless steel, magnets, dry collagraph print on cardboard with soil and Fabriano Rosaspina paper 285gr. - 25x15x7 cm


This wall-mounted sculpture by Andreou is a commentary on the ways in which nature responds to acts of extraction and the current inability of mankind to rehabilitate its relationship to nature and the environment. The title of the work is a quote from dramaturg and poet Mariangela Gualtieri, used to describe her play “Paesaggio con fratello rotto / Landscape with Broken Brother” (2007) in which she illuminates the ways in which the knowledge production embraced by the modern world separates human well-being from that of the enviroment. The open cage created by the artist, along with the collograph print with soil that comes from his home’s backyard, hints at the need to revaluate the tensions produced by dualisms such as nature/culture, human/animal. The magnetic field that holds the magnets together suggests a more holistic way of approaching all life forms.



Curatorial Note:

The exhibition’s visual narrative takes as its starting point a small work by Hambis, a linocut from 1970, which carries the title “Of Theatre and the Sun”. A black, solid sun at its rightmost corner is the center of a web of concentric circles, which suggest a diffusion of light that is all entangling, strong in its presence, and denoted by black lines. Within this tangle, ten figures without faces -the theatre’s chorus?- are enmeshed in a dance that suggests a pleading to a sun god; a weird exercise in balancing; or a practice of urgency (feel free to make your own connection).

What would happen if we thought of this ritual as a plight of bodies thirsty to give the sun a place to rest? Will we stay a bit more with the sensation of a sustained caress, of the flesh that burns ever so lightly in its touch with the world, sometimes even pleasantly so, and asks of the world to sustain this relationship?

The exhibition is designed as a spatial essay, where different techniques, images, words and worlds coexist. Emphasis is given to the ways in which the works interact and connect to each other, the surrounding architecture and material substrate of the space.

Through the idea of the sustained caress the endless variations of time and touch are foregrounded. We are thus called to reflect on the properties of printmaking to create and reproduce contact zones between surfaces and the world, where the personal, the political, and the poetic interweave.

Participating Artists:

Evelyn Anastasiou, Panayiotis Andreou, Kyriaki Costa, Kyriacos Theocharous, Eleni Panayidou, Simone Philippou, Korallia Stergides.

In dialogue with works of artists from the museum’s collection by:

Kostas Averkiou, Eleni Hadjineophytou, Kyriakos Kallis, Charalambos Krasias, Stella Lantsia, Lefteris Olympios, Frixos Papantoniou, Stass Paraskos, Michalis Phantaros, Mary Plant, Despo Pringi, Rinos Stefani, Stelios Stylianou, Hambis Tsangaris, Marianna Tsangarou, Evgenia Vasiloudi, Stelios Votsis.

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