Art Aware - second round

The second round of the Bicommunal Fine Arts Programme, aims to bring Greek and Turkish Cypriot artists closer and improve understanding of their work not only between themselves but also by the public.

The programme takes the form of a lecture and slide show by one Greek and one Turkish Cypriot artist presenting their work each first Sunday of the month at 7pm at the Goethe Zentrum, Nicosia.

Talks will be presented in Greek, Turkish and English.

This second round started in November and concludes in June, with the participation of 16 Cypriot artists ending with a group exhibition and the presentation of a catalogue.

For more information contact 22674608, 99511509, 05338625984.

In January, Art Aware will take place on the 14th (second Sunday) due to the holiday season.

Greek Cypriot artist

Daphne Mavrovouniotis-Trimikliniotis.

"I was born in Limassol. I emigrated to London in 1959, and studied Art at Hornsey College of Art, Middlesex University, London.

"I lived in London for 35 years and, even though I was far away, I found that Cyprus has always been in my thoughts and in my heart.

"This was inevitably projected into my work.

"Being aware of social and political issues has also influenced my work, which shows signs of my anxieties and worries, as well as my expectations and hopes for the present and future of the world we live in.

"My art is anthropomorphic, figurative, with the man elements, man, woman, being the focal point of the composition. Subjects taken from everyday situations and surroundings, evolve around relationships and emotions of people, love, friendship, life and death.

"These are elements found in my paintings, expressed in my way, in a technique evolved over the years, through a great deal of "experimenting and search"

Search is necessity: it is born from the confidence that the old is exhausted and the new is in search of pathways to emerge. The old and familiar seen from a new perspective provides new routes.

"Old motifs are transformed in tototally new elements; mutated, alternated and rotated, they create a whole new world: my world of reality and fantasy."

Turkish Cypriot artist

Ismet Tatar

"The theme of my recent works is Land/Earth.

"The first Land/Earth- related exhibition was held in 2005 within the framework of the European Mediterranean Art Association’s (EMMA) exhibitions in May. The main concept was "The Mysterious Texture of Land/Earth."

"The latter exhibition was held within the framework of EMAA’s May exhibitions, this time in 2006. The main concept was "And the Land/Earth".

The theme of the works prior to Land/Earth was trees. The "Pre-Fire"exhibition was held at the Eaved House, and "My Name is Olive Tree" in the Stone Art House. (The Stone Art House was a venue rented from the Antiquities Department, and restored in 1999 by Ismet Tatar).

The third exhibition was held at the Bellapaix Art Gallery in 2003.

"The theme of works prior to these was "Woman/She." A journey through a woman’s lifespan" was held at Statuk Cultural Centre on 1995. Woman – Tree –Land/Earth.

"In my paintings all trees have women’s bodies"

$1m globe sculpture

collapses

PERHAPS the glue that held the world together came apart.

A 175-ton sculpture called ''Spaceship Earth,'' intended to remind future generations of Earth's fragility, lay in ruins at Kennesaw State University after mysteriously collapsing in the middle of the night, barely three months after it was unveiled.

University officials suspect the glue holding together the stone pieces on the $1m piece of art failed. The Finnish-born sculptor says he is devastated.

''Kind of ironic,'' said Mary-Elizabeth Watson, a university employee, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. ''I had no idea it was made up of so many pieces.''

The sculptor who goes by one name, Eino, called it ''Spaceship Earth'' to honour environmentalist David Brower, a leader of the Sierra Club. It depicted a bronze figure of Brower standing atop the globe. The sculpture collapsed Dec. 28.

''How can stone collapse by itself?'' Eino asked. ''I'm devastated.'' He said he used a resin made especially for stone and worked with an engineer who assured him the globe would stay in one piece.

Eino worked on it for about two years. He travelled to Brazil to find blue quartzite and spent about four months meticulously piecing it together.

Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are looking into the possibility that someone vandalised

Horst

Weierstall

at Argo

THE Weierstall exhibition – 'Twice Removed’ - at Argo, will be a multi-media presentation involving video, photo images and collage.

The title "twice removed" refers to the removal of images from media sources like TV and newsprint’

Horst says: "In my past project titled ‘delay’ at the Accidental Meeting" show at he Powerhouse 2005, I used newsprint as a source of reference.

"In ‘Twice Removed’ I have recorded TV news coverage of the Lebanon crises over three days 25- 28.7.2006.

"The exhibition - until January 27 - will be an installation of enlarged photo images recorded directly from the screen documenting the process of news reading by focusing on face and hand sequences. The actual event of the crisis forms a subtext.

"There have been two phenomena of interest to me in the making of this project. Ist the visual removal effect, a fading quality (disappearance) of the subject in the process of reproduction and, second, the contrast between facts of the event of crises, the role of the newsreader (mediator) and our own passive role as the viewer.

"The works of the French writer Jean Baudrillard ‘Fatal strategies and perfect crime' become a source in the process of quotational references. Texts on issues of media, the masses, subject, object, love, desire, fate and chance entered the collage process. The overall presentation aims at juxtaposition of text and image within a practise of reproduction (removal) and erasure by layering texts images and materials.

"I feel that these forms of visual production come close to what Baudrillard termed as the disappearance of the subject as the result of exposure to mass media production and in his words: ‘What comes to pass in the mode of disappearance is truly other’."

Fogg Art Museum gets

political with Dissent! - provocative

black and white images

CAMBRIDGE (AP)

BEFORE the 2004 election, artist Richard Serra chose one of the most startling images of the Iraq war to convey his opinion of the Bush administration: a hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner standing with his arms spread wide.

The provocative black-and-white pictures - which Serra first labelled with ''STOP BUSH,'' then dropped two letters to spell ''STOP B S'' - anchor a new exhibit of prints at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum that balance anger with beauty, resistance with design and politics with art.

This show, featured through Feb. 25, is a collection of prints created to challenge society's status quo, from the powers of the pope in the 16th century to the United States' recent obsession with gas-guzzling SUVs.

''The works were meant to provoke all different kinds of reactions: artistic, political, social, cultural, personal,'' said Susan Dackerman, the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard museums and the exhibit's curator.

Dackerman said the exhibit evolved as she went through Harvard's collection of more than 70,000 items after joining the staff about a year-and-a-half ago.

Some in Dissent! were made by established artists, such as Andy Warhol's 1972 multicolour picture of Richard Nixon with ''Vote McGovern'' written underneath or Pablo Picasso's print satirising Spain's Gen. Francisco Franco. Others come from lesser or unknown artists, such as a T-shirt with a caricature of Bush's head and the words ''Blame Yale.''

The juxtaposition was intended, Dackerman said, to show the democratic qualities of printmaking. Prints are easy and inexpensive to reproduce and distribute, and can be put on nearly anything, from clothing to playing cards.

The curator pointed to prints made during the student strike at Harvard University in 1969. The students rallied around a drawing of a closed fist, which they plastered on T-shirts, armbands, posters and body parts to show their opposition to university policies. The fist was seen all over the campus and beyond, including the cover of Life magazine.

''I wanted to demonstrate the power of printmaking and how it's been used historically, how it's been used by other students, how it's been used by other artists,'' Dackerman said.

Many prints in the exhibit, such as Serra's, rely on a simple, easily recognised theme. General Idea's 1989 print replaced the word ''LOVE'' in Robert Indiana's iconic image with the word ''AIDS.'' Vincent Gagliostro plays with Coca-Cola's red-and-white logo to draw attention to his opposition to phar

Marcos Stasoullis

at Kypriaki Gonia

IN this exhibition – from January 12-30 - Marcos Stasoullis is presenting what he has created during the last three years, mainly in acrylic and aquarelle.

The acrylic work appears as a unit entitled "Regeneration" and these series of paintings emerge from elements of the artist’s earlier work. In this work the painter allows his imagination free to travel, concentrating his attention on the quality of the colour, originality, the vividness of rhythm, the structure as well as the simplicity of the composition.

The elements and the symbols are originated by Nature, man and the artist’s endless imagination. The opening is Friday, January 12 (tonight) by the vice president of the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Andreas Luroutziatis.

Marcos Stasoullis was born in Famagusta in 1943.

After graduating from the Gymnasium and the Paedagogical Academy and after completing his military service, he was appointed as a primary school teacher in 1965.

He took up drawing and painting lessons by correspondence and he studied at Stass Paraskos Art Summer School, the year the school was first established in Famagusta. Marcos Stasoullis’s work has emerged through his constant interest and study, his frequent occupation with painting, his attendance at many art seminars, his cooperation with many painters as well as his first strong stimuli from the cultural and social life in Famagusta. Talent, together with hard work, have also helped.

After working as a teacher in many communities, he was appointed a specialised teacher of Art and as an Art Coordinator in the Curricular Development Unit by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

He was also responsble for the Art Archives of all the primary schools in the Limassol district.

In 1989, he was granted a scholarship in the Art Faculty offered by the Central Institute of Commonwealth.

He was awarded and honoured for his artistic contribution to various institutions. He illustrated books for the Cyprus Ministry of Education and he was honoured for illustrating the book "Den Xehno kai Agonizomai," by the Pancypan Organisation of Greek Teachers.

Marcos Stastoullis’ paintings are sometimes realistic, whereas some others include surreal elements.

His themes come from landscape and still life as well as from the human being. Moreover, he mainly creates his art by the use of oil, acrylic and water colour combined with personal techniques and expressive ways.

So far, he has successfully held sixteen personal art exhibitions and has participated in many group exhibitions and his work is in many public and private collections.

Marcos Stasoullis took early retirement as a primary school head teacher in September 2000 to devote himself to artistic creation.

At present, he lives in Kato Polemidia, where he owns his art studio.

2+2

at Opus 39

OPENING on the 15th of the month and continuing until February 3, this promises to be quite an exciting mixed of four artists: Andri Iona, Achilleas Christodoulou, Georgia Panayiotou and Michael Elia.

Maria

Ladommatou

THIS enterprising exhibition opened last Friday at Gloria Gallery and is well titled: "Theatrics of the Sky and the Earth".

More next week.

When the current flu has flown.