“Stroggyli is the oldest name of Santorini, which is 128 nautical miles from Piraeus, the port of Athens.
It is the island whose history is interwoven with its volcano, the island of lava, the island with the unique beauty of its caldera world-wide. On this island you are welcomed by 31 visual artists and their art works, because every image of Santorini and every corner of it is Art”.
ORGANIZER – CONCEPT DEVELOPER:
DIMITRIS LAZAROU
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Santorini Tomato Industrial Museum “D.Nomikos”, in collaboration with Restart Contemporary Art Platform, proudly present the artistic group “Barbares d’ Esprit” and introduce the audience to the artwork of the post- contemporary group.
From June to September 2019, new etchings and drawings will be presented to the spacious gallery of Tomato Industrial Museum.
Furthermore, according to the “Artists in Residence” program of the Museum, the members of the group will be hosted on Santorini from the 9th to the 23rd of September. During this period, “Barbares d’ Esprit” will be creating new artwork, inspired by the volcanic character of the island.
The group’s art sessions will take place at the Museums workshop.
Cultural side events will be open for visitors.
The collaboration among Restart and Tomato Industrial Museum “D.Nomikos”, is on the base of reinforcing Cultural Tourism by presenting innovating contemporary art shows.
HISTORY OF THE GROUP
Originated in Holland in 2016, Barbares d’ Esprit is a contemporary artistic movement based on visual arts.
Ad Arma and Bert Van Santen, established Dutch artists, are the founders of the movement with an international character.
They invite other artists to work with them in the group.
Mohammed Quraiseh, well known Iraqi artist living in Toronto Canada, joined the group early.
Kelly, a Greek sculptor is a member since January 2019.
“Barbares d‘ Esprit” works as one artist-one creator, that means two or more members work together on one art piece. The line of work of “Barbares d’Esprit” relies on the inspirational force of all participating artists. Each artwork is created in a synthetic way from sequential gestures of the group members. Everyone is free to act or react on his expressive means. The group focuses on the outcome as a multifaced artwork with one distinctive character that gives existence to a new identity.
The group’s Manifest is:
“We are artists of this time. Our work is innovatory. Our work is multidisciplinary. We work at the boundaries of what is possible. We do look back but our work is always directed forwards. We try to expand the possibilities of diverse techniques. We have rough and but also traditional ways of working. We are not limited. We embrace challenges by overcoming them by means of creativity. Our way of working connects us. Different nationalities do not devide us. Other cultural influences are welcome to us but still we are strongly connected to our own cultural background. We are curious and like to experiment. Our work reflects on the past, today and our personal vision of tomorrow, we are thinkers. We are all travellers in our own way. Our art is autonomous.”
Venus Gallery is a promising newly established art space, located inside Aphrodite Beach Resort in Mykonos island in Greece.
It is the outcome of the expressed desire of the hotel’s board of directors to segment on Cultural Tourism, upgrade the brand’s cultural awareness and promote the exceptional work of local contemporary artists.
But above all, Venus Gallery highlights the pure passion of the owners to contribute to the revival and preservation of the historical, cultural, and spiritual heritage of society.
Together with RESTART, a formal institution that curates and organizes significant cultural events for high end hotels, the innovative hoteliers have created a spacious and multifunctional art space that will host each season 4 periodical group exhibitions.
All of us, working at Venus Gallery, are very proud to present to the international visitors that resident in Aphrodite Beach Resort, the sophisticated artwork of Greek creators. We have created our gallery to give our visitors the chance to explore new artistic horizons, embrace new cultures and be inspired by the works of talented artists.
For 2019, the first year of operation, we place emphasis on the artwork, giving the opportunity to more than 90 creators, to expose their art in diverse mediums. The scope of Venus Gallery is to become a perfect venue for promoting those unusually talented people and their original and outstanding works.
The selection of artists and works obeys the curatorial line of Restart Cultural Tourism program, which is associated to the empowerment of international interest on Greek Art.
Restart, organizes, curates and assemblies our exhibitions by establishing a concept or a proposal of theoretical reflection acting as a cultural mediator between the artistic objects and the public.
As a gallery, we offer free consultancy to individuals who want to start their art collector carrier. We choose creators who are innovative in their approach for putting forward a message with their craft, thus we are willing to share strategic info on the contemporary Greek art market and help you decide among our represented artists.
Have lovely vacations and enjoy the Art.
Kelly Athanasiadou
Art Manager
On its second year, already winning the Greek Tourism Award at the category of Cultural Tourism, Aqua Gallery continues to connect Greek hospitality with the promotion of local Contemporary Art production.
Hosted at the spacious lobby of Art Hotel, located at Pyrgos Village, Santorini’s most prominent and intellectual district, the gallery’s distinctive activities showcase a range of exhibitions and artists’ projects.
Known for its quality programming and important collaborations with other central art galleries, Aqua Gallery proudly presents the work of 80 artists for the 2018 exhibition program. AG is primarily focused on Contemporary Art and exclusively collaborates with #Rest@rt Contemporary Art Platform aiming to “Restart international interest on Greek Contemporary Art”.
Through the gallery’s connection with the wide and strongly established network of Aqua Vista Hotels, Aqua Gallery exposes its represented artists to broader audiences, fostering a greater understanding of their artistic strategies and the context in which their ideas arise. The managerial team of #Rest@rt Platform offers long term strategic planning for private collectors and institutions on both established and emerging artists presented by the gallery.
Aqua Gallery is a vital part of Santorini’s cultural community, giving the opportunity to the international visitors of the island, to experience Greek Contemporary Art scene by identifying new dynamics between art and the public realm. Open on a 24/7 basis, the gallery features group exhibitions as a surprising element of Art Hotel visitors and increases public awareness on the importance of artistic expression.
Organizing a segmented trip to Santorini Island exclusively for journalists and reporters.
In collaboration with Aqua Vista Hotels and Kokkalo Restaurant, we invited and hosted a selected team of press representatives of the most significant media.
The aim of a Press Trip is to strengthen the relations with our communicational ambassadors and to offer a first hand experience of our client’s services.
For the Press Trip, we have chosen a series of events in order to best present to our journalists guests the unique aspects, tastes and cultural insights of not only the destination but also our client’s. This way, by inviting executive members of the press, a hotelier or a restaurant businessman, has the ability to introduce his enterprise with the most direct way, building one to one relationships with those who will spread out the information.
A unique traveling experience was made by visiting “Symposion”, at Megalochori village where Argy Kakissis and Yannis Pantazis have established an amazing cultural program influenced by Greek mythology’s timeless relevance to life as it is lived today. Inspired by the nine Muses, Symposion offers guests a unique experience through interactive tours, workshops, vintage instrument exhibitions, and original performances.
www.symposionsantorini.com
A journey to the long wine history of the island was made to our guests by the experts of “Estate Argyros” wine yards. Based in Episkopi Santorini, the winery owns 120ha of vineyards with ungrafted -original rootstock – phylloxera safe plants averaging 70 years old, including some of the oldest vines on the island which are over 200 years old.
http://estateargyros.com
Distillation prosses of traditional drink “ouzo” was presented to our guests by Loukas Lignos, the grandson of the first ouzo maker of the island at “Canava Santorini Distillery” where Loukas, with great respect of tradition, has also established a museum hosting a collection of old objects. At Canava Santorini they follow a slow procedure to prepare their spirits in their handmade copper alembic stills.
https://www.canavasantorini.gr/
Canaves Oia Epitome in collaboration with #Rest@rt Contemporary Art Platform presents the painting exhibition “Abstraction and Gesture” which takes place inside the suites and the public areas of the hotel.
The aim of the project is to bring the artwork closer to its audience by placing it inside the habitable environment.
Each suite hosts unique paintings of Greek contemporary artists.
The concept of the exhibition is to highlight the colors of Greek Summer, as they are reflected in the interaction among Santorini’s volcanic environment on the blue oceanic background.
Canaves Oia Epitome invests on Cultural Tourism in addition to its high-end services, promoting distinctive local artists to its demanding international visitors.
#Rest@rt is an official project under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Greek Ministry of Tourism and the National Tourism organization as a development of Cultural Tourism to promote Greek Contemporary Artists trough a highly sophisticated network of 5star hotels.
Kelly Athanasiadou
#Rest@rt Managing Director
With joy I accepted the challenge to curate a specific thematic exhibition that had to interact with the minimal architectural designs of a brand-new hotel in Santorini island. I consider it a great opportunity for Greek artists to have the ability to showcase their work to upper level tourists of the country. Furthermore I find Greece’s visual artistic production and contemporary artistic creation to be a dynamic core of its daily function and evolution.
In the “Abstraction & Gesture” exhibition at the Canaves Oia Epitome Hotel, 26 contemporary Greek artists, present their works, moving in the sphere of expressionism and abstraction, in a process where the joy of hospitality is combined with a high artistic quality, offering to each visitor a unique experience”.
Nikolena Kalaitzaki,
Art-Historian & Curator
In the atmospheric and truly charming area of Lindian Village in Rhodes, on the exceptionally beautiful Lardos beach, the exhibition “The Eternal Greek Light” has found the perfect place to act as its host. The exhibition features nine highly respected Greek artists. The architectural design of the hotel is also inspiring as the exhibition areas and the areas which separate them do not merely leave the flow of light unbroken, but rather they encourage and make full use of the flow of light between the hotel’s outdoor, semi-outdoor and indoor spaces. This acts to eliminate the small separations between the areas and, first and foremost, is in perfect harmony with the ideas behind the current exhibition.
Moreover, the arrangement of the spaces in relation to the environment, and in particular the magnificent beach, the wonderful garden with its tropical vegetation, the reflections of the natural environment and the hotel architecture in the water features [private beach, uniquely designed swimming pools, etc], all encourage imaginative refractions of light and add an idyllic atmosphere and charm. An attribute that, within twenty four hours, feels almost like a vision with an alternative intensity and texture. An attribute which, finally, is in harmony with the theme of the current exhibition and gives hotel patrons, and in particular travelers from other countries, the opportunity to get to know the work of famous Greek painters and to admire the way in which each individual artist has interpreted the visual decryption and poetic recreation/reconstruction of the Greek light.
All 9 artists are dedicated, each in accordance with his personality and the dynamics of his talent, to fully understanding and representing the charismatic light of Greece and to enabling visitors to experience our homeland’s light with its unique textures and transformations with both their gaze and with their spirit. A light which cannot be found in any other place on earth. A light that acquires a special clarity and vibrality on the coast of the Dodecanese islands. A clarity that allows and encourages both our vision and our psyche to make connections which are unlimited in range and in balance.
A light which shimmers with joy in the eternal rhythm dictated by the richness of Greek nature. A light which is diffused on earth and sky, on the water and on the land, and each time with a different density/clarity depending on the weather conditions, the seasons, and the time of day. A light that does not only give birth to reflections and visions, but also to forms, combinations, and even glimpses of images and organised compositions.
The inexhaustible charm of this light, the light of our homeland, with all its eccentricities from the unique atmosphere in the area, have been captured and expressed with great proficiency by the nine artists.
“They make use of” the light in their works in the sense of recreating it, as they do not merely use it decoratively, but regenerate it. Each artist works from his own perspective and with his own chosen, specialised theme: Seas and beaches. Skies which, in an indescribable union with the water, bring to life a uniquely textured fiction, in the form of a fleeting vision.
Wonderfully green slopes created, or better brought to life, by an endless variety of shades of green. Presented in “interior” sunbeams with forms and objects that float in the light. Primary, diachronic forms projected into an “unexplored” space exclusively created for them.
All nine participating artists are particularly in tune with the visual expression and deconstruction of the special properties displayed by the light of Greece. The participating artists are: Chryssa Verghi, Poly Kanistra, Dimitris Koukos, Michalis Madenis, Kaiti Mavrommati, Christos Palantzas, Nikos-Giorgos Papoutsidis, Eleni Pavlopoulou, Vangelis Rinas. The nine artists are worthy representatives of two generations of Greek artists and each individual presents his own personal interpretation of the texture of the Greek light, drawn from on his own psychological influences. An interpretation based on the dynamics of his or her own particular talent.
All nine artists have thrown off the “shackles” of art “schools” and movements, and precisely because of this, they are particularly successful in representing the light as they experience it and feel it. It is no coincidence that Rodin said that Greek artists create – as much as is artistically possible – in direct cooperation with the light. The uniquely clear and wide-spectrum light of Greece which is written deep in the DNA of Greek artists means that from birth they react against every group effort to deconstruct it and every “scientific” approach to the light taken with the help of physics, chemistry and mathematics For precisely this reason, unlike their northern colleagues who did not know, and therefore did not feel the magic of, the Greek light, gifted Greek artists have never had to formally declare themselves to be expressionists etc.
The light of Greece is metaphysical in texture and life and, especially in the Dodecanese islands, it is characterised by a special aura, clarity and luster.
It is exactly this light which shines, with its unique luster and sheen, on Chryssa Verghi’s wonderful seas and connects directly with supreme energy.
It is this light which is reconstructed by the earthly, yet lusciously coloured, landscapes by Poly Kanistra.
It is this light which appears in an idiomatic atmosphere exactly where the sea meets the sky in Dimitris Koukos’ landscapes.
It is this light which was decrypted – with an endless and unique vigor – throughout Michalis Madenis’ entire artistic journey, giving it a metaphysical breath of life. A journey that could be described as an Ode to Light.
A light which is imbued with a certain mystery in Kaiti Mavrommati’s enigmatic interiors.
A magical light in the works of Christos Palantzas who charmingly negates every conventional separation between interior and exterior spaces, endowing the entire composition with a transcendent “aura”.
A light which is constantly given renewed luster and charm in the idiosyncratic paintings of Nikos Giorgos Papoutsidis where cacti, butterflies and transcendent codes are orchestrated in an emblematic natural world.
A light that spins metaphysical visions in the golden meadows and the somewhat unearthly glow which infuses Eleni Pavlopoulou’s works.
An eternal light: timeless, a light that is, first and foremost, metaphysical in Vangelis Rinas’ works. A light which does not only recreate uniquely inspired visions but also, with infinite energy, creates messages in transcendental orbits.
The multi-layered current exhibition, an Ode to the light of Greece, which features inspired works by nine important artists – has, in the Lindian Village, found the perfect place to act as its host. The ideals of both the architecture and the surrounding spaces make particularly good use of the clarity and glow of the Greek light as it is gifted with the special characteristics of the Dodecanese “atmosphere”.
Dora Iliopoulos-Rogan
Dr. Art historian, art critic
Officier des Arts et Lettres
I would like to express my sincere thanks to the nine artists for participating in the exhibition and for the trust they have placed in me, to the Svyriadis family for their impeccable hospitality and to Ms. Kelly Athanasiadou for all her coordination work and for her highly creative cooperation.
Oriented at the development of Cultural Tourism, “Escaping South Festival” aims to become an established international event that will highlight the vivid character of all southern areas around the globe.
Each year, 3 selected countries will be hosted at the spacious premises of Lindian Village Hotel in order to present the cultural heritage of their “souths” through their gastronomy and arts. This initiative belongs to the Hotel Management as an effort to create a distinctive year-festival, open for all the local audience of Rhodes and international visitors.
#Rest@rt Contemporary Art Platform proudly accepted management’s proposal and organizes the artistic part of “Escaping South Festival”.
For 2018, the cultural program of the Festival, includes the following:
Italy: Presenting the Mediterranean sounds of Sicily, with a live music concert of “Encardia”
France: Promoting of Mediterranean Cinema, in collaboration with “Cinemed Film Festival” of Montpellier. “Manuel”, the 2017 Antigone Award winning movie will be presented to the specially created cinema hall.
Greece: a very exquisite contemporary art exhibition, under the curation of famous art historian Dr. Dora Iliopoulos Rogan- will be showcased at the newly created Art Space of Lindian Village Hotel. Nine exceptional Greek Contemporary Artists involve the visitor to an art dialogue at the base of the uniqueness of Greek Light- as shown on their work. This exhibition is open to the public from early August till the end of the Festival- mid October.
At a special exhibitional area- at the reception lobby, a rare collection of local pottery- from the Icarus Collection- will also be showcased as a tribute to long pottery tradition of the island.
The internationally established Greek artist Filippos Tsitsopoulos, has created an artistic video statement, exclusively for “Escaping South Festival”. This video- art is projected through the TV monitors of the luxurious rooms of Lindian Village.
I would like to personally thank all participating artists, technical crew and working teams, as well as Dr. Dora Rogan for her trust in our aim and of course Sviriades family and their managerial group for sharing their vision with #Rest@rt and making all productions easy for us.
