artworks
Delta collaborates with ARTWORKS and presents works of Greek artists in the restaurant’s venue. The restaurant embraces art and organically integrates yearly rotating artworks in its interior and surrounding spaces.
Following the concept of sustainability, we are invited to think of art as part of diverse ecosystems and interdependent interactions. The artists presenting their work at Delta Restaurantare awardees of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program by ARTWORKS.
Untitled (Zoi Gaitanidou, 2017)
Zoi Gaitanidou (b. 1981, Athens) is using embroidery to create elaborate tapestries that combine abstract patterns with figurative elements. Tropical foliage, a recurrent element in her work, “is reminiscent of a naive derivative of neo-Expressionism that also evokes a contemporary take on the tropical vision of Henri Rousseau”, as art critic Roberta Smith has stated. In her work, dense embroidery in rich colors alternates with light pastel painting, referencing the changes in one’s state of mind: the meditative clearness of an empty mind in contrast to a whirl of thoughts and feelings. The persistently full areas of the works’ surface consist of smaller embroideries, a patchwork of different narratives.
Courtesy of The Breeder gallery and the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019
Together we don’t stand (I)
(Vasilis Papageorgiou, 2021)
Vasilis Papageorgiou (b. 1991, Athens) creates sculptures and installations inspired by places of leisure and environments where interactions within social groups take place: hotels, bars, casinos, stadiums, and streets. These works are amplified by the absence of the figure, creating an uncanny feeling for the viewer. In the coronavirus era, Papageorgiou’s works have a heightened potency due to our impeded ability to gather freely in such spaces, in many parts of the world. The spectre of this absence haunts these works as Papageorgiou attempts to present narratives between reality and fiction, yet also between theatrical scenes and quotidian life. Papageorgiou juxtaposes symbols and architectural elements synonymous with social gathering, such as benches, with a minimalistic form and aesthetic to present a new way to think about leisure, gathering and identity. Even with the figure absent in his work, Papageorgiou allows space for inquiry into habitual leisure practice, the presumption of human interaction, social gathering, the study of identification.
Courtesy of UNA gallery and the artist
SΝF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018
Untitled (still not over you) (Iris Touliatou, 2020)
In Untitled (still not over you) various work lighting typologies, collected mainly from defunct offices in Athens, are orchestrated and reinstalled – their lifetime remaining, unknown in exhibitions. Neither fully operative nor entirely exhausted, they are ready mades, objets – trouvés, serial, ordinary objects, in a peculiar state of functional latency. Their upcoming exhaustion is concisely and provocatively, elongated during repeated installations. They become a landscape of metabolic activity —of an amount of light that enters a room, of an amount of energy that leaves a room, of a certain amount of intention, the minimum amount of meaningful gesture. They are physical traces of a desire, or an impulse, glimpses of locations and surroundings. They provide evidence of personal and material limitations. They are also records of affect, meditations, manifestos, emotional contours of life during increasingly precarious times. They are essays on forces, and on resistance.
Courtesy of RODEO gallery and the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020
“The Desire for Consciousness” series (Maria Mavropoulou)
The images in the series “The Desire for Consciousness” by Maria Mavropoulou (b. 1989, Athens), avoid the use of verbal descriptions through the titles. In this context it is impossible to determine the time, place and conditions under which the photo was taken while the black background lacks any information that could help locate its subject in the real world. The object depicted is transferred to a virtual space, loses its material existence, becomes an idea and functions symbolically. The artist attempts to create new symbols, raising questions about how perceptions of the same stimulus vary and therefore, the amount of interpretations that can arise depending on the ever-changing circumstances.
First image: Untitled (waterfall) from “The Desire for Consciousness” series, 2016
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019
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Second image: Untitled (cloud) from “The Desire for Consciousness” series, 2016
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019
“From a Museum of Systematic Displacement” series
(Antonis Theodoridis, 2019)
This series is an homage to (as well as a link between) two Dadaist artists who have marked the medium of collage: Hannah Hoch with her celebrated work From an Ethnographic Museum (1929) and Max Ernst with his ingenious definition of collage as the culture of systematic displacement and its effects. The series of print collages presents a fictional collection of artefacts, forged through the meticulous pairing and collaging of disparate archival photographic images. The work scrutinizes the limits of photographic believability, its ability to produce and convey the illusion of an object, to create a visual likeness and to possess a degree of accuracy and truthfulness. Despite alluding to a sort of futuristic science fiction, it points backwards towards an alternate past, exploiting the chance meeting of two displaced historical realities on an unfamiliar plane.
First work: #3 Untitled from the series “From a Museum of Systematic Displacement”, 2019
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019
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Second work: #4 Untitled from the series “From a Museum of Systematic Displacement”, 2019
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019
“Folds” series
(Giorgos Kontis)
Giorgos Kontis (b. 1981, Athens) focuses on abstraction, the simplicity of the forms, the sense of the minimum. Materials such as wax, silk and the encaustic technique, with the sensuousness and tactility they have, play a central part in his practice; also, the way the works are displayed aspire to create an intimate relationship with the beholder. In the series “Folds”, Kontis recalls modernism and abstraction, and is interested in the function of the color field painting. This persistent reference in his work reveals his disposition for contemplation, deconstruction and formation of a new language that functions through the senses and the gaze.
First work: Untitled (Ochre, Folds series), 2021
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021
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Second work:
Untitled (Red, Folds series), 2020
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021
ARTWORKS
ARTWORKS was founded in 2017 with the aim of creating a fertile and nurturing environment for Greek artists through funding and public engagement opportunities. Through the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program, ARTWORKS has been awarding monetary prizes to individual artists and curators since 2018, in recognition of their artistic skills and qualifications. Apart from financial support, the Program offers skill-sharing and professional development opportunities in collaboration with arts professionals and institutions. ARTWORKS is a civil non-profit company and is supported by its founding donor, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). ARTWORKS has supported until today 310 individuals.
For more info please visit: https://www.art-works.gr/en/