a.antonopoulou.art presents the new solo exhibition of Valerios Caloutsis (1927-2014) with works from the series "Communication". It is the artist's second exhibition organized by the gallery after last year's, which had as its theme of "Reconstitution" of the landscape and the destruction of the environment.

The current exhibition includes drawings from the period 1972-1973, with which Caloutsis approaches the problem of communication.

All the designs have the same dimensions (50 x 70 cm) and are worked with tempera in combination with the technique of the stencil, or in other words poussoir. Drawing inspiration from the immediacy of modern graphic design and the mass reproduction of images, Caloutsis comments on the lack of communication in an era of rapid technological development that is supposed to facilitate - but in fact makes communication in interpersonal relationships difficult.

The exhibition at a.antonopoulou.art is at the same time an opportunity to recall the individual "Communication 73", which Caloutsis made at the Desmos Art Gallery in the fall of 1973. In that exhibition, 32 temperas were presented out of the approximately 100 belonging in total in this section (actually 35 are from 1972 and the rest from 1973).

Fifty years later, the perennial issue of lack of communication remains relevant and continues to concern us, especially if we consider it with today's facts, namely the dominance of social media, the overuse of mobile phones, but also the imposed distance caused by the pandemic.

“I plan all day. Heads, heads, heads. Repetitive molds. Idols and the faceless mass" writes the artist in his diary in November 1972. And in his interview with Efi Caloutsi (August 29, 1973), which took place on the occasion of his exhibition at Desmos, he refers to what inspired him to deal with the subject of communication: “After working for a few months with the human body, two faces emerged. Two profiles that face each other and provoke discussion. Two subjects of communication were born and I began to experiment with the infinite possibilities of the problem. […] They are not profiles of people with blue eyes, long hair or moustaches, that is, with distinct characteristics. These profiles are completely clinical and impersonal. The mouth is always half-open to emphasize the vocal function. The eyes either don't exist or are two holes that emit rays of light. The heads resemble medical charts. They are human faces but they could also be dolls." The heads drawn by Kaloutsis converse with the faceless characters of Yannis Gaitis, the genderless dolls of Grigoris Semitekolos and the mannequins of Costas Sfikas in the film "Model" (1974), while the "anguish tendency to communicate" in his paintings comes to mind George Ioannou.

For Caloutsis, heads are primarily symbols. In "Communication" the artist shows the great importance of symbols in our daily life. It is thus "a symbolic communication determined by the intellect or mind rather than by the senses or feelings". Caloutsis' stylized man communicates in many different ways. As he says, in his work "communication can be achieved without words, with the eyes alone or with feelings, but in this case the heads are in a state of frozen sterility". He identifies two categories in these works. The first deals with interpersonal communication. Here the speech is stylized and emphasis is placed on the eyes and the mouth, the two most basic organs of human communication. And the second category is that of mass communication, where the profile image is repeated ad infinitum: it enters from one side of the paper and continues along its entire length. The titles of the works are indicative: Conference, Confrontations, Discussions, Power, Environment, Brain, Speech, Attack, Conversation, The same opposite, etc.

In summary, with "Communication" Caloutsis wants to underline "how planned we are in everything. This is the main point of my communication research. How programmed we are into every idea and how incapable we are of creating our own ideas and acting on them".

Curator: Christoforos Marinos