Thalia-Maria Alexaki

An exhibition with social dimensions. Christos Alevras. An artist with a clear sensitivity towards current social issues. Playing with words and concepts, the artist shows the shifting of interest from the substantial human contact, this primordial human need, to society, the human mass that coexists, feels, cooperates or collides, walks and fights together.

Within the context of this exhibition, we find "society", an interactive video that aims to introduce the visitor to the artist's frame of mind. The works are divided in three interrelated units: series Y, series O, series Mutations.
Through creations that project the primeval fertility symbol, which can be identified with femininity and female nature and, consequently, with the female womb that carries life, we are led to Mutations, where man leads his own species, bearing a new "being", a future "man", above and beyond nature, or, even better, against nature.
Of particular interest are the works that interweave these 3 units, fertility, gestation and being.
The deeper intention of this exhibition is directly connected to the way that the objects and their display have an impact on human mentality. The objects act as bearers of meanings and messages but also as witnesses of facts, experiences and quests.
They are characterised by a semantic pluralism, which is connected to the meanings that the artist has assigned to them, as well as with their transformation to museum exhibits.
As far as the space is concerned, it is by no means neutral. It has a special character and a specific orientation that relate at the same time with its architecture and history, but also with the different aspects that dictate the layout of the objects and, of course, with the objects themselves.
As a result, we can definitely say that the space has a significant contribution to the creation of meanings and values, giving more or less significance to different objects. With regards to its relationship to the different objects, they contain as well as occupy space, as a result of their three-dimensional form. This relationship is immediate, crucial and interconnected. The objects impregnate the space with meanings and indications, while the space, as a concept, bears a double meaning; it is Geni Tzami, the building itself, as well as an exhibition space.
The presentation of Christos Alevras' creations as museum exhibits and their transformation from mute matter to speaking entities is an experience that each and every one of us will live differently, depending on their expertise, their scientific knowledge, their sensitivity, their perception, the acuteness of their senses, their way of thinking, their social and cultural background, their experiences, their ideas, their emotions, their imagination and their expectations.
As a result, each visitor, based on the facts and the information that the exhibition provides through the placing of the objects and the use of audiovisual material, will become the recipient of messages or meanings, that he or she will complement in a special and deeply personal way, generating similar or completely different stories.
Our ultimate aim is to challenge the visitor and initiate a process of thought, search and discovery. Our wish is to awake as many visitors as possible, of all ages, giving them the opportunity to see the elongations of art and the power it can have when it rises above and beyond the boundaries of ones' self (of art for art's sake) and sides with the fulfillment of a common goal.
*Thalia-Maria Alexaki
Curator of the Thessaloniki Municipal Art gallery.