Socratis Socratous - Inviolable Refuge

Omikron Gallery presents Socratis Socratous’ exhibition from April 9 to May 21, 2011, his first solo show in Cyprus in six years. The installation, sculptures and photographic pieces featured in the exhibition are directly linked to the urban landscape. In the gallery’s premises, the artist creates an austere architectural environment surrounded by geometric and organic artworks. Through his experience and understanding of extremist political action and consequently of the extreme reaction of citizens, Socratous collects, reproduces and synthesises images of “destruction” found not just in Greece and Cyprus but globally.

In his work Socratous tangibly “discusses” how humans deal with destruction and deconstruction. This is a subject that the artist has revisited many times in his career. The urban environment’s destruction due to natural and human causes, but also the way humans experience and comprehend incidents as such, are expressed through the materials he uses. His expressive tools, metal pieces of different type, size, weight, colour and texture, twisted and bent in a variety of shapes, remind us of the urban architecture and building. These pieces, which become instruments and instigators for examination and contemplation, are the same as those used globally by people in order to show their feelings of anger, frustration, disappointment, even fear. The metal pieces are utilised by the protesters as a reaction towards the images of destruction they face daily. However, sometimes, in the hands of their holders these materials create images similar to the ones they are protesting against.

The artworks exhibited display characteristics of the artist’s contemporary, innovatory and progressive sculpture. Socratous concentrates on the political and cultural damage. The synthesis of his works preexists in the architectural environment of the city. It is modified and reconstructed in such a way as to develop communication and conceptual understanding between it and the viewer. The materials are violently thrown in the air and then, they are “captured” by the artist in their aerial position. This symbolises the barriers that have gone down, the non-existing boundaries, Man’s intrusion into what it was once inviolable and untouchable. In our days, Man does not only intervene or interfere in order to improve or change. On the contrary, he is committing an offence and a transgression. The artist investigates and projects these actions and re-actions which are found in the urban environment and can be at the same time familiar, strange, even menacing.

Socratis Socratous represented Cyprus at the Venice Biennale in 2009 with his work SOCRATIS SOCRATOUS / RUMOURS, having as a curator Sophie Duplaix. A year later he exhibits Socratis Socratous Photographs in Athens for the Athens’ and Epidavros Festival at the Benaki Museum. The artist has held solo shows in Cyprus, Greece and abroad. He has also taken part in group exhibitions, for example in Paris (during the Paris/Chypre – La Saison Culturelle Européenne and Nuit Blanche), in Arles (Les Recontres d’Arles, Photographie) etc. In 2001 he represented Greece in the Tirana Biennial and in 2009 he participated in Thessaloniki Biennale 2. Socratous was the official photographer of the preparations for the opening of the 2004 Athens Olympics. Some of his works have been exhibited at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and at the Kunsthalle in Athens, at the Athens Museum of Cycladic Art, at DESTE Foundation, at the Old Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki etc. In 2007 and 2008 Socratous undertook a commissioned project with Hermés-Paris in Dubai, Bahrain, Athens and was chosen for the artistic direction of Hermés-Paris group of shops in Venice for June 2011.

Private View, 8 April, 20:00

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