Christodoulos Panayiotou "Stories from the lives of my friends"

Point is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Christodoulos Panayiotou in Cyprus. The exhibition brings together existing and newly commissioned work under the title Stories from the lives of my friends.

In 1889, the celebrated Russian dramaturge Anton Chekhov wrote in a letter to his intimate friend Aleksey Suvorin: “Guess what, I’m writing a novel!!! And what an intricate plot! I’ve called it Stories from the Lives of My Friends”. This would be a novel that Chekhov never completed. By borrowing the allusive title of this unfulfilled project, Panayiotou does not attempt a retrospective speculation on this lost literary impulse; on the contrary, he proposes the title as a radical interpretation of Chekhov’s dramaturgy and relevant notion of subtext. As Stanislavski wrote "Chekhov often expressed his thought not in speeches, but in pauses or between the lines or in replies consisting of a single word […] the characters often feel and think things not expressed in the lines they speak". The concept of subtext, especially after its elevation to a method in the United States and its global propagation, remains an important link between modern and contemporary theatre.

Theatrical legacies, aspects and notions such as “subtext”, “estrangement effect” and “disillusionment”, are pivotal elements found in the core of Panayiotou’ s practice. For his exhibition at Point he puts together a series of works which develop beyond what is enounced, as do the writer’s characters. Associations and intimate dialogues are implied rather than exposed and elaborate dialectics are staged, facilitating thus - almost provocatively – the emergence of new discourses. Panayiotou’ s choice of materials puts the idea of a dominant truth into question and challenges the ways we perceive and interpret our collective and individual narrations.

Christodoulos Panayiotou, born in 1978 in Limassol, Cyprus is an internationally acclaimed artist whose wide-ranging research focuses on the identification and uncovering of hidden narratives in the visual records of history and time. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, China / Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden / Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg / CCA Kitakyushu, Japan / Centre d’Art Contemporain de Brétigny, France / Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Louis, USA / Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany / Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland and Cubitt, London, UK. He has participated in major international survey exhibitions, including the 8th Berlin Biennale / 7th Liverpool Biennial / Documenta 13, Kassel / 6th Taipei Biennale and Busan Biennale 2008. His work was also shown in a number of museum exhibitions including: Museion, Bolzano, Italy / Migros Museum, Zürich, Switzerland / CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA / Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona, Spain / Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands / Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden / Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA / Ashkal Alwan Center for Contemporary Arts, Beirut, Lebanon / Artist Space, New York, USA, MoCA Miami, USA. He was the recipient of The Future of Europe Prize in 2010 and the DESTE Prize in 2005 and in 2008 he was awarded a residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien by UNDO foundation. Christodoulos Panayiotou was selected to represent Cyprus at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Opening: Saturday, 7 March 2015, 12:00
Brunch will be served in the garden

Opening Hours
Tuesday - Friday: 11:00 - 18:00
Saturday: 11:00 - 15:00
* You can visit the exhibition outside the opening hours by appointment.