DIANN BAUER - SOCRATIS SOCRATOUS (click the names for more images)

19.06.04 - 09.10.04

vamiali’s gallery is proud to present an exhibition of Diann Bauer (USA) and Socratis Socratous (Cyprus).

Diann Bauer was born in New York and currently lives and works in London. In her first solo show in Athens she presents Meijius (2004), a large scale wall-based drawing. The drawing functions like a cinematic screen with static images of violent battles among Japanese warriors in an imaginary urban environment. These images seem to present an extreme explosive narration although there is no sense of temporal direction in them. Bauer ’s work has been described as “unfixing … the linear order of narrative and perceived space and time. Her work freely utilises images from several culture and times, carrying out and remarking upon the violence of historical expropriation and absorption of information technologies, a use that is also effectively deployed by the entertainment industries on the sole basis of a logic of action. Cultures, Bauer seems to suggest, are being revised under the logic of violences - a logic of that which has been understood to date as the destruction of all order”.

Socratis Socratous is one of the most active Greek artists of the new generation. He has already had many solo shows as well as numerous group projects in Athens and abroad. Socratous creates constructions with natural materials, using photographic documentation to show the everydayness of leisure time (sports, entertainment), drawing, as well as installations that are both sculpture and event. For this exhibition at vamiali’s, he presents an in situ large scale installation made of flowers and photographic documentation from Greek night clubs. An ephemeral set of pedestals made from carnations, a flower with many connotations, reflect the basic architectural form while at the same time referring to the way in which popular culture is transformed into a manipulation of the human dream. The installation will change during time, stimulating the viewer's senses of smell and touch, with references to the most popular way of night life entertainment in Greece today.

Bauer and Socratous present their work as two separate solo shows in the same space. Although visually contrasting, they have common focus points in that each creates an environment surrounding the viewer, emphasising the importance of viewer's active participation to the viewing of the work. Each explores the detailed hand gesture, the influence from other disciplines (movies, architecture, design) and popular culture, fantastic and constructed "heroes" in our modernity, and the balance between narration and abstraction.