Socratis Socratous 'Casts of an Island'

Curated by Michelangelo Corsaro

Opening : Saturday, 28 May 2016 | 18:00

Exhibition walk-through led by the curator of the show Michelangelo Corsaro | 19:00

Come and join us for music, bread and wine in the garden

Exhibition duration: 1 June - 16 July 2016

Exhibition Opening Hours:
Wednesday - Friday 11:00 - 18:00
Saturday 11:00 - 15:00

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One would be tempted to forget about wars, interethnic conflicts, refugees, borders, checkpoints, and the holes left by the bullets on the façade of the Ledra Palace Hotel. In front of the sand one would be tempted to speak of the sand and its long journeys, from Africa, to the Middle-East, to the Southern coasts of Europe. But the journeys of the sand follow the same routes of the people fleeing wars, interethnic conflicts, and poverty.

Once Socratous’ works are broken down into their constituent elements, it is possible to see how each of these elements is in fact a sign that carries a memory. Like words conceal their history within their etymology, Socratous' sculptures become legible as soon as we interrogate their genesis. How to separate, in theory and in practice, the artwork from the place where it is made, with its affects, its memories, and its turmoil? In other words, any attempt to subject these works to hierarchies between their visual and conceptual execution would harm the complexity of Socratous' practice: to speak of symbolism or of sheer beauty would be reductive.

What is truly eloquent here is instead the identity of the artwork: their birthplaces are the workshops where Socratous chooses to work, asking for hospitality while altering their normal working routine; their colour is that of the sandstorms that sweep the Mediterranean regardless of borders, or that of the old buildings that have been erected both in the north and in the south of Cyprus; their shape is determined by will and by skill, but by contingencies as well, like the shape of mountains and of broken things.

With a new series of works presented at the end of a Residency at Point, Socratous reflects once again upon the formalisation of issues of identity, contested territories, and displacement.

Socratis Socratous lives and works in Greece and Cyprus. He has had numerous solo and group shows in Cyprus, Greece and abroad. Selected exhibitions include: DESTE Prize Award Shortlisted artists exhibition at The Cycladic Museum, Athens (2015), ‘Pier 94 Special Projects’, The Armory Show, New York (2015), Galerie Saint-Séverin, Paris (2015), ‘This is not my beautiful house’, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens (2014), ‘Ηow to Make a Garden’, Visual Artists’ space, Nicosia (2012), ‘Gestures in Time’ at Qalandia International: Art & Life in Palestine, Jerusalem (2012), ‘Restless’, Αdelaide International Festival, Adelaide, (2012), ‘A Rock and a Hard Place’ at 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2011), ‘Uncovered: Nicosia International Airport, Project #7’, Ledra Street/Locmaci Buffer Zone, Nicosia, (2011), ‘Rumours’, Pavillion of Republic of Cyprus, curated by Sophie Duplaix, 53rd Venice Biennial (2009), ‘The Garden’, Greek participation, Tirana Biennale, Albania (2001). Socratis Socratous is represented by The Breeder, Athens.

Michelangelo Corsaro finished his curatorial studies at the IUAV University of Venice in 2012. He was curator at Kunsthalle Athena from 2013 to 2015. Recent exhibitions include ‘Handsome, Young, and Unemployed’, Komplot, Brussels, (2016), ‘Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe’, Parallel, Vienna, (2015), ‘We'll Meet Again’, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens, (2015), ‘The terrestrial globe is covered with volcanoes, which serve as its anus (G. Bataille)’, DADA DA Academy, Athens, (2014). ‘They are indeed the principle of things, and yet they are not interpretable and empty as mirrors’, Totàl, Athens, (2014). His texts were published in CAC Interviu, South as a State of Mind and ArtReview among others.