Crossings: Wait for
the blockbuster
The Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre is the setting for a huge contemporary art exhibition. 
Entitled Crossings, it is a contemporary view and is the third action in the project "Crossings: Movements of People and Movement of Cultures: Changes in the Mediterranean from Ancient to Modern Times" whose leader is the Pierides Foundation.
The project is organised within the framework of the European Union Culture 2000 programme and taking part are Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Italy and France.
The show’s curators are Yiannis Toumazis and  Androulla Michael, assisted by Fabrice Flahutez.
The opening  takes place on Friday, March 23, at 8pm and it will close of May 20.
The themes of Crossings are the cultural interactions between the Occident and the Orient through the movements – organised or not – of  people, goods and ideas via the Mediterranean basin.
 Crossings is a touring exhibition of contemporary art, which will demonstrate how the new generations of artists from various Mediterranean countries perceive issues relevant to cultural contact and interaction.
Using mainly new media and technologies, artists from all five countries involved in the project as well as from other Mediterranean countries (Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Tunisia) will present their own experience and understanding of interaction between cultures.
Interaction and dialogue are the main axis of the exhibition, as well as identity, national or individual, natural and/non-natural boundaries amongst people, the emblematic "Other" and finally death, which compromises a common place of reconciliation for all humans.
These are the main themes that artists present in this exhibition. The different social and ethnic background of the artists guarantees a dynamic forum.
The aim of the exhibition is to encourage the mutual understanding of differences and similarities amongst European citizens as well as people from other Mediterranean countries. In particular, the exhibition will attempt to bring to the surface the multicultural character of modern European societies, to stress the necessity of bridging the gap between communities and to urge the establishment of relations based on mutual trust and understanding between Europe, the Near East and the northern coast of Africa.
Yiannis Toumazis and Androulla Michael, the curators of the exhibition, note:
"This exhibition endeavours to bring together artists whose work contains the very idea of crossings in the world of today, where cultural output is striving to achieve a dynamic but at the same time controversial role It is obvious that the satiation prevalent in the traditionally great powers of Western Europe has created a stagnancy which inevitably leads to a regurgitation of creativity and a recycling of ideologies.
"Nothing new appears to be able to shock the increasingly aware and parched public.
"This exhibition endeavours to examine how a number of contemporary artists comprehend this notion of movements and crossings. It aims at recording opinions, at listening, and tries to possibly open a window to honest and frank meetings of both likes and opposites."
The participating artists are:
Vince Briffa, Malta. Lives and works in Malta
Didier Courbot, France. Lives and works in Paris
Joseph Dadoune, Israel. Lives and works in Israel and Europe
Marcel Dinahet, France. Lives and works in France
Haris Epaminonda, Cyprus. Lives and works in Nicosia.
Serap Kanay, Cyprus. Lives and works in Famagusta.
Stephanos Karababas and Katerina Attalidou, Cyprus. Live and work in Nicosia
Servet Kocyigit, Turkey. Lives and works in Amsterdam.
Phanos Kyriacou, Cyprus. Lives and works in Cyprus
Lia Lapithi, Cyprus. Lives and works in Cyprus
Daniel Le, France. Lives and works in Paris.
Panayiotis Michael, Cyprus. Lives and works in Nicosia.
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Cyprus. Lives and works in Cyprus.
Francoise Parfait, France. Lives and works in Paris.
Pierre Portelli, Malta. Lives and works in Malta.
Yorgos Sapountzis, Greece. Lives and works in Berlin.
Andreas Savva, Cyprus. Lives and works in Athens.
Nasan Tur, Germany. Lives and works in Frankfurt and London
Eric Valette, France. Lives and works in Paris.

The Other Side
LIANA Spanou-Zanti’s work can be seen at Heliotropio Gallery, Larnaca.
 A very lively exhibition, indeed, by an artist who can not remain untouched by the significant worldwide shift towards consumerism.
This new wave has affected our society tremendously and, as a result, we inevitably as individuals have adopted unfortunately most of its negative aspects.
In other words, we have all been trapped in an endless chase of consumer goods which only leads to hallucination and an imaginary happiness.
Our behaviour has reached the limits of idolatry.
The title chosen - "The Other Side" - stands for a revelation that dares to liberate human  beings of today from their passions, whatever those might be, by helping them  feel self satisfied, within the limits of their natural capabilities.
This exhibition continues until March 31.

Rose Theatre and
The Crucible
THE New Rose Theatre presents "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller at Technochoros (ETHAL), Franklin Roosevelt Ave Limassol.
There are performances  on March 29, 30,31 and  April 1, at 8pm.
Telephone Wendy for reservations on 99058394
Bryan Ayres comments:  ‘The Crucible’  has been acclaimed as the finest American play of the 20th century.  It is set in Salem, Massachusetts an English settlement in the 19th century.
"It is a hard life for these strict Puritans. When some rebellious girls hold orgies they are accused of witchcraft. They in turn accuse their elders – and a full witch hunt ensues”.
Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" during the McCarthy anti-communist "witch trials" 50 years ago.

Vargas in the corner  
SUSAN Vargas Stefani’s show continues at Kypriaki Gonia, Larnaca.
Here are more comments (from last week) on her new work by the author and  Professor of Art, Caroline Frances:
"Yes, there is a going in circles, becoming light-headed, becoming misplaced only to find ourselves rooted in the vertical trees and of boats halfway asleep.
"And the sky disappears by the height of the dense trees.
"The sky is not where you expect it to be – it has become our skin. So, becoming lost is a way of finding oneself again; it is a journey through the river, blending into the horizons the strokes on canvas become colours, edges, the vertical, the horizontal - a coming back to discover oneself.
  "Here one encounters an obsession with space – dynamic negative space – which is not just a pretext for serenity – it simply is. Space is away of questioning the world and art itself  - one that mingles, reassembles intuitively her surroundings.
"Now it is the Amazon, its diverseness and time without end. An unconscious link of the tropical the Mediterranean  juxtaposition; it is so subtle and clean, yet one succumbs to the oils as the different worlds mix and melt into each other. "
  Susan Vargas Stefani studied fine arts in Syracuse University, USA, Austria and Colombia, she has shown her work in many solo exhibitions and also participated in many group exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad
Her exhibition was opened by Marios  Miltiadou, General Manager Cyprus Petroleum Storage Company Ltd, on Wednesday, and will  continue until April 20.

Weaver
of Worlds
THE Weaver of Worlds exhibition, by Cuban artist Jose Franco, is at the North Hall of Famagusta Gate Gallery, Nicosia, with the vernissage on Monday, March 19.
A full report next week on this most important event.
The exhibition ends on March 30.
Do not miss it.

Very new shows
Dora Oronti and Andros Pavlides, at Technis Dromena Gallery,  this most promising exhibition will be opened on Monday, by Ambassador Erato Kozakou-Marcoulis  and will continue until  April 3.
Tereza Pilava, at  Opus 39: Tereza entitles her exhibition Butterflies.  It opened this week and will continue until March 31.
Andros Tazou, at Morphi Gallery, Limassol:  This can be seen until April 6.
An exhibition of new works by Stavros Antonopoulos has already opened at Gloria’s and will continue until April 4.
The exhibition of new works by Raymond Wilson and Michael Turner continues at Dino’s Art CafE 62-66, Irinis Street, Limassol, until April 15.
Ina Constantinidou has an exhibition of painting at Kyklos Gallery, Paphos until  April 4.

Demosthenis Kokkinides
at C K Gallery
THIS new and spacious gallery is very near the Nicosia Cleopatra Hotel.
 The Greek artist Demosthenis Kokkinides, who I believe teaches painting at the Athens University Art School, captures space and light with exceptional clarity.
While at the opening, I met Cypriot artist Stavros Kikas who studied under Kokkinides and he said to The Cyprus Weekly: "Look a second time and you see a lot of world and colour."

Economou
shines
 at Apocalypse
LEFTERIS Economou is at the Apocalypse gallery, in an exhibition of paintings by an artists of the second generation.
Economou was born in 1930 and his full retrospective will continue until April 4.
Here is the artist who could (and still can) be seen painting in the streets of the old city.
He really observes and has a superb sense of colour. Not only this but look at his portraits. Excellent.
There are many wonderful landscapes on view at Apocalypse, as well. A whole selection. Take your choice.
Also an outstanding array of our coastal scenes, with fisherman at their work.
Do visit.

Retrospective
 in Larnaca

Vasso Kyriaki is at the Municipal Art Gallery,  Larnaca, with a wonderful retrospective that continues until April 15.
It covers 50 years of her work.
Dora Bakoyianni, Mayor of Athens writes: "Her  particular and poetic work underlines the consistency, the persistence and the artist’s complete devotion to art as a creative intervention to society."
This is a fully comprehensive retrospective.
Here are some notes on Kyriaki’s work by Nellie Kyriazi, Director of the Municipal Gallery of Athens, where this fully comprehensive exhibition was first presented:
"The painting of Vasso Kyriaki began in the atmosphere of the late Greek "modernite." Being a student of Georgiades and  Moralis at the School of Fine Arts she turns already in her student works to abstract tendencies. The works of her student years at the school of fine arts, with their familiar subjects of the portrait, of the nude and of the landscape reveal the ease of a mature artist with the experience of taming space and of colour rather than the uncertain attempts of a student.
"The relation between reality and its representations seems to preoccupy Kyriaki timely enough: a speculation that will develop through her work into a creation of pictures of inverted range, autonomous pictures that challenge the reality to interpret them when she presented in 1987 the elaborate constructions with poor materials – a work of ten years -  she won the interest and the positive comments of the critics.
"Her research was correlated then with the combines of Rauschenberg, who had incorporated a bed and a stuffed animal in the painting surface of his works during the Sixties in the USA.
“In the Seventies, Kyriaki turned to materials  that have nothing to do with painting. They are rough, insignificant parts of our everyday routine, taken for granted  in their self evident use.
"Rubber from car tyres, wood, string, worn out fabrics, metal sheets: these are the raw materials for remodelling.
"This adventure with the materials lasted  more than 20 years.
"At the beginning of 2000, Kyriaki returned to painting
"The style, purified from expressionist tensions and minimalising the chromatic tools, re-examines the plastic values and the phenomenon of visual perception in different interpretations, without detracting anything from its subjectivity."
This wonderful show continues until April 15 at the Municipal Gallery, Larnaca.