Looking Forward

Michalis Papamichael presents a new body of work titled, Looking Forword for his first solo exhibition in Cyprus. Developing a series of very different pieces, Papamichael’s work connects through a fabric of political allusions and whispers of a social language. With a background in both Psychology and Fine Arts from Los Angeles and Munich, respectively, in the last years, Michalis Papamichael has had solo exhibitions as well as participated in group shows in Germany. The experience of having lived and worked in both the US and Germany makes up part of the unique approach he adopts in his artistic techniques and concepts. Papamichael has worked with the positioning of his own body, with sculptural objects, and, more characteristically, with complex technical processes of sculptures molded from papier mâché. His unique sense of sculpting malleable material, like paper, into a moist slab of plaster, large enough to resemble a forceful wall made from intense labour, shows how the artist’s work is steered by a sensibility to raise awareness through ideas which share a social consciousness.

For this new display of work presented for the first time in Cyprus, Michalis Papamichael has chosen a neglected open air industrial space, something between a parking lot and a warehouse in the centre of Limassol. The raw and undefined space further endorses some of the critical issues he otherwise brings into his work, just as the curating of this space in relation to the works themselves is directly communicative with the audience. The commercial value of the work is ignored and so is the regular function of the financial transaction of galleries. On the contrary, Papamichael urges the viewer into being a participant who activates the ability to think about the role of individuals in relation to large mechanisms of powers. An example of this is seen in his bulky sculpture, Newspaper, which appears imposing in the way that the colossal scale of monumental art often belittles the significance of the human figure, yet striking in the way that layers of pressing newspapers become a bonding agent for the “news” that today’s media compels us to remember.

With his performance piece, Examining chaos with a guide, the artist constructs a room in which seeing the space escapes the immediate intention of the participant. A blind guide orients the viewer in what seems like an unrestricted space allowing both to cross each other’s reality in a shared experience of a dialogue, by which patience and contact become fundamental tools for human transformation. Recreating a human experience by way of sensing what the other person experiences is an invention for empathic encounters, which Michalis Papamichael is keen on inducing through his artwork.

Maria Petrides, Independent Writer

Opening: June 20, 8:00 pm

Days of operation: Friday June 21st to Sunday, June 29th, 2014 from 6.00 to 9.00 pm

The Performance will take place only during the opening and closing of the exhibition, 29th of June from 6.00 pm