Reconstructions,

A solo exhibition by Stergios Stamos in two spaces

ALMA Trikala: 12/6/21 - 31/7/21, ALMA Athens: 17/6/21 - 17/7/21 Athens, Trikala CURATED BY Bia Papadopoulou TEXT BY Bia Papadopoulou TRANSLATION BY Yota Dimitriou PARTICIPANTS Stergios Stamos

Tiresias,
Pliable aluminium tube, pliable plastic tube plexiglass, light, text (T.S.Eliot),
207 x 85 x 85 cm,
2017-18,
Trikala

An uncommon, abstract portrait of Tiresias, the famous blind prophet of antiquity, serves as the starting point for a new series of works by Stergios Stamos. Intricate clusters of flexible, plastic tubes enclose verses from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, written in neon. Τhe plastic bends and twists like a tangled ball of yarn, symbolically referencing the Gordian Knot.

The reference is a clue. Stamos, who for many years has been active in political matters, now becomes a prophet himself, bridging the past with his own vision for the future. The title of one of his sculptures, taken from a text by his favourite astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, suggests that the artist realizes that his own interpretation creates a universal narrative as a possible account of History: “The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.” The quote is visibly written on the projecting illuminated tubes next to dark iron bars through geometric cement slabs posing as horizontal lines in space. Raw cement and iron bars constitute the two dominant materials of this new series of sculptures. They dominated the photographs used by the artist in his work Aleppo (2016), an exact replica of the bombarded city of the same name. Debris from a city in ruins, echoes and images of a brutal civil war, are alchemically metamorphosed into symbols of reconstruction. This new series of works, while deriving from his previous ones on the subject of immigration, radiates a very different aura, one that communicates a clear message of hopefulness.

Censorship,
Cement, iron, colour, pages from
'Fear and Misery of the Third Reich’
by Bertolt Brecht (censored during the Greek junta),
45 x 180 x 45 cm,
2017,
Athens

Stamos’ compositions, using images and materials inspired by the disastrous civil war in Syria, intend to banish and exorcise all evil. The obvious geometrical symmetry found in his previous works is replaced here by expressionistic gestures that work therapeutically on the psyche.

The iron rods are crumpled, creased, folded, molded and knitted like pulsating lines in space, creating new structures. Painted sometimes with bright, cheerful, glossy colours, they generate irregular formations in the air that suddenly become immobilized. Other times, they are intertwined with the light –both a structural and conceptual element found in his past works– now imbued with an obvious symbolism of hope.

Lines of conflict,
Iron, cement, colour,
82 x 60 x 55 cm,
2020,
Athens

Lines of conflict, Through the wreckage, Restructuring, Couple-Embrace, Incubation, Flower. The titles alone decode the conception and narrative of Stamos’ abstract sculptures. They highlight a conceptual path from disaster to rebirth; a journey from the dramatic, traumatic experience to the healing of wounds and the restart of life.

Restructuring,
Cement, iron, colour,
255 x 85 x 25 cm,
2017,
Athens

The morphology of his paintings follows a similar pattern; some are even inspired by his sculptures. Improvised single strands, like tangled wires or threads, are contrasted with colourful fields full of random episodes of matter. Abstract scriptures seemingly float in the air, in unidentified spaces superimposed upon each other like palimpsests. The scriptures are wrapped around geometric tubular shapes or are tied like knots around irregular structures reminiscent of sculptures. The artist essentially paints spaces within a space, and very often he skillfully introduces the illusion of a third dimension in his two-dimensional works.

Through the wreckage…,
Cement, iron plexiglass, light,
50 x 90 x 50 cm,
2018,
Athens

His gestures bring to mind the process of automatic writing; they generate spontaneous delusions that reflect the irrationality of our time. His work Cage is a clear reference to the current condition of confinement during the pandemic. The work is built upon manuscripts from the archives of the prison in Trikala. Stamos covers them with successive coats of paint in order to build a suffocating space, inhabited by an assemblage of tubular shapes recalling the portrait of Tiresias. Light can be seen, however, in the background.

Stamos’ latest work reinstates hope within the precarious human existence.

Bia Papadopoulou, Art Historian & Curator

Translated by Yota Dimitriou

Exhibition Catalogue