Dimitris Foutris
03 Dec 2009 - 23 Jan 2010
DIMITRIS FOUTRIS
"Swornhaylinglei"
03.12.2009 – 23.01.2010
Swornhaylinglei, Dimitris Foutris’ third solo show, opens on Thursday, 3 December 2009, at 19:30, on the first floor of the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.
The show will run until 23 January 2010.
“The future lies ahead like a glittering city, but like the cities of the desert disappears when approached. In certain lights it is easy to see the towers and the domes, even the people going to and fro. We speak of it with longing and with love. The future. But the city is a fake. The future and the present and the past exist only in our minds, and from a distance the borders of each shrink and fade like the borders of hostile countries seen from a floating city in the sky. The river runs from one country to another without stopping. And even the most solid of things and the most real, the best-loved and the well-known are only hand-shadows on the wall. Empty space and points of light.”
Jeanette Winterson, 'Sexing the Cherry
Swornhaylinglei is not a real word, but to Dimitris Foutris it best describes the notion of an imaginary land.
A black, rectangular, box-like shell rising within the space of the gallery stands for a fantastical place, a patch of ground, a site. Fragments align inside it to make up a narrative; an image that strains to draw boundaries against the vast expanses of our inner world.
Random episodes come together to form a mural, with the stress falling upon a sense of the tragic surfacing from amidst an absurd reality, of metaphysical anguish, of the fragility and vulnerability of existence.
The works probe the notion of the sacred, of identity, pain, power and death, referencing the writings of Kafka, Thomas More’s utopia, religious parables and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein as embodied by his work Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’.
The space surrounding this box-like structure functions as an antechamber, where a piece of music playing in loop prepares the viewer to partake in a ritual.
"Swornhaylinglei"
03.12.2009 – 23.01.2010
Swornhaylinglei, Dimitris Foutris’ third solo show, opens on Thursday, 3 December 2009, at 19:30, on the first floor of the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.
The show will run until 23 January 2010.
“The future lies ahead like a glittering city, but like the cities of the desert disappears when approached. In certain lights it is easy to see the towers and the domes, even the people going to and fro. We speak of it with longing and with love. The future. But the city is a fake. The future and the present and the past exist only in our minds, and from a distance the borders of each shrink and fade like the borders of hostile countries seen from a floating city in the sky. The river runs from one country to another without stopping. And even the most solid of things and the most real, the best-loved and the well-known are only hand-shadows on the wall. Empty space and points of light.”
Jeanette Winterson, 'Sexing the Cherry
Swornhaylinglei is not a real word, but to Dimitris Foutris it best describes the notion of an imaginary land.
A black, rectangular, box-like shell rising within the space of the gallery stands for a fantastical place, a patch of ground, a site. Fragments align inside it to make up a narrative; an image that strains to draw boundaries against the vast expanses of our inner world.
Random episodes come together to form a mural, with the stress falling upon a sense of the tragic surfacing from amidst an absurd reality, of metaphysical anguish, of the fragility and vulnerability of existence.
The works probe the notion of the sacred, of identity, pain, power and death, referencing the writings of Kafka, Thomas More’s utopia, religious parables and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein as embodied by his work Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’.
The space surrounding this box-like structure functions as an antechamber, where a piece of music playing in loop prepares the viewer to partake in a ritual.