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Darwin's dummy and five more stories

Canvas painting remains my privileged field. However, I consider necessary the use of different media, specifically photography, video, installation and digital print, whenever they may transcribe the core of my artistic venture. It happened so with the pieces of this exhibition.*

The staring point of this series of artworks was a disposition of assembling small narratives, without a beginning or an end, based in some sort  of arrangement of objects. The artworks are also based on what these objects do not reveal at first sight, on the way they may activate the collective and personal memory, on the conceptual or emotional associations they can produce.

This is not something new. The object has been treated in diverse ways through the centuries, tracing the ideas of the epochs and “illustrating” the quest of visual thinking. From the painters of the Renaissance and the object's magical rendering, it ended up in its dispersion, deformation and removal from its normal context during the 20^th century, in order to become itself a work of art.

Over the last years, the object is redefining its position within the artwork. Painted, photographed, scanned with terrifying accuracy, still or immobilized, in expected or unexpected arrangements, it is narrating life stories, being a credible witness.

In the images of this exhibition, the object-subject-matter, takes up this role, according to my intentions. It denotes, or implies its relation to people' s lives, the relationship of people between them, it's relation with memory, with the world of ideas and sentiments.

Neither the painters nor the objects changed. It is our gaze that changed.

 

Teta Makri, December 2010