Apollonas Glykas at the exhibition “SYZYGY – Spatial cuts and merging orbits”

Nykyaika Gallery hosts the SYZYGY – Spatial cuts and merging orbits, a duo solo exhibition of Athens based artists Apollon Glykas & Ilias Sipsas co-curated by Zoe Kalfa & Sebastian Boulter, a dialogue between photography and sculpture. The exhibition is an étude on the art of photography; questioning and revising its technical abilities, its artistic qualities and its cultural perceptions –ultimately, its limits. Harnessing up the rather unappealing reputation of photography –as an exact documentation of reality–, Athens based artists Apollon Glykas and Ilias Sipsas are carrying out a whole universe of peculiar beings, new objectivities and spatial arrangements. Their primary material comes from an archive of anonymous photographs, shot mainly for the purpose of documenting moments of everyday lives, rather than as artistic gestures.

Sipsas and Glykas treat these photographs as what they actually are, allegedly limitlessly reproducible yet very fragile and potentially mislaid objects, only to disturb and reverse this perception. The results they generate through a series of genius disruptions and rearrangements of their material are dramatically multiplying and astonishing, as they denude these photographs from their contexts –the particular space and time of their capture but most importantly, their unfailing connection to death. For, all photographs are an uncomforting reminder of the vulnerability and ephemeral nature of all existences, whether human or animal lives, buildings, objects and landscapes are portrayed.

Hosted in a Finnish gallery, the proposed exhibition, with its own particular references to the Greek identity and to Greekness, also aspires, therefore, to function as an open door, a door step, for a fruitful cultural interaction and dialogue –just as the exhibits suggest.

Curated by:
Zoe Kalfa
Sebastian Boulter

Lighting: Liisa Makinen
Catalogue design: Talc studio

Special thanks:
Sebastian Boulter, Panos Matthaiou & Vaso Panayiotopoulou (Talc studio), Pirjo Koskinen, Ville Kurki (photographs), Embassy of Greece in Finland, George Syrmas (MINU), Kostas Kostopoulos

Opening: Friday 4, June 2021, 16.00
Duration: June 4 to July 5, 2021

Valokuvakeskus Nykyaika Gallery
Kauppakatu 14, 33210 Tampere, Finland
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*Apollon Glykas is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019

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