Phryctoria
Vasilis Zografos
Opening on May 17th from 6pm
Exhibition form May 18th to June 17th, 2017
The Greek artist Vasilis Zografos will be showing at Gallery Espace L five groups of paintings, brought together under the title Phryctoria.
In Ancient Greece Phryctoria (Greek: φρυκτωρία) was a way of communication, used by means of torches lit on mountain or hill tops which could be seen from afar. The fire signals allowed for messages to be sent quickly from one place to another over long distances. Herodotus and Aeschylus (Agamemnon, describing the Fall of Troy) mention the Phryctoria in their writings, but its origin probably dates from much earlier.
Messages sent in this manner held a certain degree of room for interpretation in them. The way news is communicated nowadays is in a sense not unlike the Phryctoria: it has become mainly a visual means of communication - radio news and written journalism having fallen into decline - and the overload of information, with its different, and sometimes unverified sources, leaves the content of the message open for interpretation.
Artworks follow a similar pattern. They are signals, but depending on the messenger (the artist) or the receiver (the viewer), their meaning leaves ample space for interpretation. In the communication of facts (news), this might be considered as a flaw, but it is exactly in this blurred zone of personal interpretations and associations that poetry is created in an artwork.
For this exhibition, the idea of the Phryctoria was the starting point for Vasilis Zografos to bring together a series of works dealing with our notion of communication, our conception of truth, and the way we deal with information. Through it, he lays bare the role of the artist as a generator of signals, a transmitter of information, a carrier of messages.
In addition to the show, a selection of works by Vivianne van Singer, Valerie Belin and Fernando de la Rocque will engage a dialogue with Zografos' paintings, thus multiplying the messages, and in their interaction broaden the possibilities of interpretations, free for all to make.
Vasilis Zografos
Opening on May 17th from 6pm
Exhibition form May 18th to June 17th, 2017
The Greek artist Vasilis Zografos will be showing at Gallery Espace L five groups of paintings, brought together under the title Phryctoria.
In Ancient Greece Phryctoria (Greek: φρυκτωρία) was a way of communication, used by means of torches lit on mountain or hill tops which could be seen from afar. The fire signals allowed for messages to be sent quickly from one place to another over long distances. Herodotus and Aeschylus (Agamemnon, describing the Fall of Troy) mention the Phryctoria in their writings, but its origin probably dates from much earlier.
Messages sent in this manner held a certain degree of room for interpretation in them. The way news is communicated nowadays is in a sense not unlike the Phryctoria: it has become mainly a visual means of communication - radio news and written journalism having fallen into decline - and the overload of information, with its different, and sometimes unverified sources, leaves the content of the message open for interpretation.
Artworks follow a similar pattern. They are signals, but depending on the messenger (the artist) or the receiver (the viewer), their meaning leaves ample space for interpretation. In the communication of facts (news), this might be considered as a flaw, but it is exactly in this blurred zone of personal interpretations and associations that poetry is created in an artwork.
For this exhibition, the idea of the Phryctoria was the starting point for Vasilis Zografos to bring together a series of works dealing with our notion of communication, our conception of truth, and the way we deal with information. Through it, he lays bare the role of the artist as a generator of signals, a transmitter of information, a carrier of messages.
In addition to the show, a selection of works by Vivianne van Singer, Valerie Belin and Fernando de la Rocque will engage a dialogue with Zografos' paintings, thus multiplying the messages, and in their interaction broaden the possibilities of interpretations, free for all to make.