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ART FACING THE RUINS

05.04.2017 - 15.07.2017

Tasos Pavlopoulos, "The prophecy", 04.10.2010, acrylic and ink on paper, 29.5 X 21 cm

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AD Gallery presents the show entitled “Art Facing the Ruins” on the gallery’s 1st floor.
In the beginning of the 60’s Vlassis Caniaris creates a series of works based on the Greek gastarbeiters in the Germany of the 50’s. Today in Greece more than 1.500.000 “legal” and “illegal” economic migrants are ostentatiously absent from the art that is being produced. In the end, are there any political works in the contemporary artistic production? Does the doctrine of the “free” artist or intellectual, as someone disconnected from the social struggles, survive and become convincing nowadays because of the defeat of radical theories?
When we talk about political art we refer to art, which puts the defeated of the central conflict at its center of interest. But who are these defeated? Are they the eponymous protagonists of history that personify the conflict? The latter are never truly defeated since their action and their archives define the content of the official history. The truly defeated are, in the end, the anonymous. Those for whom defeat has implications, not only for their life, but also for their hope in pushing forward and practically capitalizing on their skills for the benefit of society.
The political does not constitute a category that is independent of a particular social reality at a specific place and time. It acquires its real content only through the two-way relationship with the matrix that has given birth to it, triggering painful and annoying questions and ruptures in that specific society. Political art cannot be sterilized by annoying concepts such as moral commitment, social responsibility, solidarity and dignity.

Participating artists: Vlassis Caniaris, George Drivas, Steve Gianakos, Steven C. Harvey, Nikos Markou, Dimitris Michalakis, Tassos Pavlopoulos, Anastasis Stratakis


Exhibition duration: April 5 – July 15, 2017
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