On Wednesday 25th of November AD gallery is opening the third solo show of Georgia Sagri under the title "Galaxy/ Another Study of the Same Page".
On the first floor of the gallery, Sagri presents a series of drawings she made by scratching her fingernails on existing posters, where a layer of silver-grey ink is printed. The posters she uses, come from advertising campaigns of political organizations, theaters and commercial products. By scratching them the artist draws faces on their surfaces; faces that emerge from specific and existing social acts that the paper surface reveals. However, the work is not about the production of distinctive portrayals, but the formation of a community of people presented here as a unified work.
Sagri also uses the same approach to the performance that is going to be presented here under the title “Exodus”. The performance is going to be filmed by the director Constantinos Giannaris and the final video will carry the signatures of both artists.
Nearby there are on display three dresses that resemble the clothing Popova designed in post-revolution Russia. As the latter would proclaim, “No single artistic success has given me such profound satisfaction as the sight of a peasant woman or a worker buying a piece of my fabric for a dress.” Constructivists were the first among the followers of 20th century movements that realized the relationship between political power and everyday life consumer practices, between the nature of material goods and the survival of the progressive ideas of the revolution. They themselves preferred the role of the “designer-producer” of mass consumption products from that of the traditional artist. Their ideas 35 years later created a fertile soil for the development of the work of Andy Warhol.
On the second floor of the gallery there is a sculpture under the title “Milk for all” which is constantly gushing a stream of its content and a poster that hangs from the ceiling which invites those who are in need of milk to use it.
Finally, on the left wall of the gallery the visitor can see 4 small paintings that illustrate the production, distribution and consumption procedures of the final product which is the so-called here “Milk for all”. Through this work, Sagri continues to study the role of the work of art in contemporary society. She refuses the role of the artist as the one who is leading the “conceptual journey” that a spectator of the work “should” do and places herself on the role of the “producer”. A producer that connects the humanitarian character of the artistic work with the pressing demands of contemporary societies, as well as with the aesthetics of consumption goods.
The exhibition lasts until the 10th of February 2010.
image gallery