Dreamsailors

The artworks presented in the “Dreamsailors” exhibition narrate stories, which are both personal and collective. Each artist’s perception of reality intersects with various symbols, notions and forms of collective memory, creating in this way utopian worlds. Those worlds can be compared to dreams one wakes up from, not certain whether he is still in Morpheus’s embrace. The viewer enters the utopian worlds depicted in the artwork, through the symbols that the artists integrate in their dreamy narrations, and is then lost in his own thoughts. A dream sailor becomes aware of the fact that he is dreaming, while having a so-called lucid dream, and starts gaining control over the content of his dreams. Similarly, the artists create their compositions while maintaining a conscious spontaneity. In other words the artists of the exhibition become the “Dreamsailors” of their work, by controlling their dream worlds. In this way they stimulate and navigate the thoughts and the emotions of the viewer towards different experiences, memories and associations. In Avlami’s work, the viewer identifies with the subconsious and the memories of a little child: he is impressed by nature’s colours and textures and discovers hidden paths, he converses with gigantic creatures and builds shelters. In the chart-like works of the artist, the human factor is not absent; it is indirectly embedded in his work. Avlamis recalls and captures the alternating emotions, which accompany his experiences and memories, and therefore creates abstract maps of feelings. Threat and fear go hand in hand with a sense of security, since the artist’s linear strokes guide the viewer to hubs of serenity in the form of cove-like shelters. Overall, the imaginative microcosms of Avlamis are characterized by a sense of nostalgia for carefreeness long gone. Anastasakos’ work reveals a more adult perspective, intriguing an existential mood: he contemplates on the past, in order to explain the present and to face the future. His works depict recurring motifs of mythical and hybrid creatures in a phantasmagorical environment where everything is fluid. As a result the limits of time and space are made obsolete, allowing the viewer to freely delve into his own mental associations. Those motifs reflect the artist’s continuous confrontation with time, oblivion and death, selective memory and hallucinations, love and inspiration. While the elements found in the microcosms of Anastasakos are drawn from earthy inspirations, Papamichalopoulos depicts futuristic cityscapes where humans seem to be absent. Zoomorphic entities, which are suspended in an unworldly environment, are the residents of those cities of the future. Those entities, figments of the artist’s imagination, sometimes appear to be familiar and intimate, while other times they seem to be impregnable and menacing. Τhe public is called to pursue both distant and close-up perspectives of those three artists’ work, in order to comprehend each composition as a whole, but also to appreciate its individual components. Deconstructing the composition allows for personal and collective images and stories to be unraveled. It is through those stories that the “Dreamsailors” navigate the viewers on a journey from experience to memory, from the past through the present and into the future, and from the real world to one of possibilities and transcendences. Leonie Gavrias

Participating Artists: Manolis Anastasakos, Alexis Avlamis, Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos