Kalfayan Galleries present the solo show of the artist Maria Loizidou titled “Cropping Up”. Maria Loizidou, who was among the finalists of the 2014 Curate Award of the Fondazione Prada and the Qatar Museum Authorities, visits Athens once again with a daring project that perceives the socio-geographical space of the gallery as a challenge to create a subversive order of things. In expanding and evolving the concepts inherent in such works as “Collective Autobiography” (presented at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, 2013), as well as her recent large-scale solo exhibition titled “Curating Body/The Cached Space” held at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia (2014), Loizidou attempts to permit the viewer to “perceive that which appears possible or not, in an ‘ambiguous space’ which is re-defined”.
Loizidou experiments by bringing into a dialogue the history of the Kalfayan family, which consists of three generations of art dealers, and the animated disorder that prevails in her studio in Nicosia, to a part of Athens that is in upheaval. This reflects, for her, “the philosophical question, ‘Why should something occur and not nothing?’” The re-appropriation of an entire series of media, themes and techniques which the artist employs in her work, such as printing, sculpting or even the simple gesture of smudging, channels and introduces a new perception of reality and comprehension of the essence of “cropping up”. At the same time, the structure of the exhibition, the appropriation of the architecture and the arrangement of the space through the artworks, re-negotiates the perception of the individual regarding that which is revealed through the relationship of things at a precise moment in time and the way by which the viewer interacts and identifies himself in relationship to the space.
Short bio:
Maria Loizidou is a visual artist. After her studies in Fine Arts at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, she lived in Paris and then settled in Nicosia. In 2014 she was short-listed for the Curate Award of the Fondazione Prada and the Qatar Museum Authorities. Loizidou has exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions (Venice Biennale of Art and Architecture, 1986, 2004, 2006, Cairo Biennale, 2010 et al.), has been commissioned to create public projects (Futuroscope, Poitiers, 1991, Fatima, Portugal, 2007 et al.), has created various in situ museum projects (e.g. Musée d’ Art Moderne de Saint Etienne, 2010; Beaux Arts de Lyon, 2005; Benaki Museum, Athens 2008; Bozar-Bruxelles, 2012), and has participated in lectures and talks in various institutions. Her most recent exhibitions include the Yeosu International Art Festival 2014; A New Necessity – Community & Territory; “Curating Body, The Cached Space” (solo), Cyprus Museum, Nicosia (2014); “Collective Autobiography” (solo), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2013); 4th and 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art; “Privileged Access” (solo), Kalfayan Galleries, Thessaloniki (2011); “Living Small” (solo), Benaki Museum, Athens (2008). Loizidou’s work addresses issues of concern to humans in their everyday lives and isolates moments of the ‘other’, our other self, and of relationships in general that describe and maintain the strength of fragility. The artist keeps renewing her work’s perspective enriching it with social and political concerns giving emphasis to “the power of fragility”. Her collaboration with AA & U For Architecture, Art and Urbanism has given her the possibility to address such issues on an interdisciplinary level.
