Opening | Tuesday 31 July 2018 |
20:00 – 23:00
After a period of silence Mj Tom of
the Artistic Cooperativa LosOtros returns to Athens, to present his new work,
under the title “Limbus” showcasing a completely new body of work, in Depot
Gallery from July 31th until September 6th.
“Limbus” consists of a series of
artworks in very large formats, in Black and White, with a minimal approach and
a strong dialogue with the space. They say a lot by saying nothing. Just Looks
or Gazes. And through these gazes, stories unfold.
Focusing constantly on what lies
beyond the limits of everyday life, Mj Tom burdens himself with the faction of
humans that intentionally [?] choose [?] to remain outside of what is
considered socially conventional. By focusing on these overlooked or
deliberately neglected humans, Mj Tom takes on the process of investigating
these enigmatic persons.
Questioning and studying goes unnoticed,
he blurs the lines between documentation and participation, by weaving the
stories behind these universes. In doing so,he takes on some of their secrecy
as well. The result is an ability to subtly bring out the mysterious dignity of
these people and spaces that are so often neglected or prudently rejected.
The exploration of these unoticed
almost invisible beings, who exist in every city and every country reveals a
certain universality that is present throughout the work, counter balanced by
the intimacy that the artist conveys in the way that he treats his subject
matter.
The result is a complex and often
open-ended social critique... an ‘Open Language’... a silent, sensitive poetry
that is working against the saturation... the overburdening of messages and
signals that we are subject to... within everyday life. Through a spontaneous,
respectful practice, he attempts to make ‘a place for free thinking’... a
‘space of dead time’... using a language which is ‘infinite, abstract’, and
thus ‘universal’.
As he quotes “Limbus is not a
exhibition or a show nor a series of, but a sequence of questions in visual
form, a narrative in pieces or chapters of a book, or… A pilgrimage, typically
of some length, or a return to familiar places in cities or the honoring to the
recording of the emotions they emerged from them, or… “
And he adds “ I return to the
gallery space to question... Question what is important and what it is not.
Question the white cube, the space itself and the rules, that conveys. Question
the way of seeing things and making artworks. Question the politically correct.
Question the canvas and acrylic. Question the figurative. Question the
abstract. Question the ideas of
contemporary art. Question the ideas of urban art. And above all to question myself.
Why Question? To leave the comfort zone. To not create artworks that please or
conform to the modern world.”
Almost a campaign against Youth and
Beauty Culture and what it convey it, to the collective unconscious.
Limbus aka Limbo | a region on the
edge of hell (limbus means "hem" or "border") for those who
are not saved even though they did not sin, exists in Christian theology by
Dante's time, but the poet's version of this region is more generous than most.
Dante's Limbo, technically the first
circle of hell, includes virtuous non-Christian adults in addition to
unbaptized infants. We thus find here many of the great heroes, thinkers, and
creative minds of ancient Greece and Rome as well as such medieval
non-Christians as Saladin, Sultan of Egypt in the late twelfth century, and the
great Islamic philosophers Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroës (Ibn Rushd).
For Dante, Limbo was also the home
of major figures from the Hebrew Bible, who, according to Christian theology,
were "liberated" by Jesus following his crucifixion.
About the Artist
European Visual Artist Mj Tom
chooses not to share any personal information. Since 2000 he established the
Visual Poetry | Urban Art Group LosOtros with his alter ego Andrea Nada. Seeing
that, he lived between Berlin, Barcelona and Paris. His work has been exhibited
at London, Paris, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Dubai.
…
His current body of work includes
mixed media, collage, sculpture, installation, and digital printing. Irreverent
and fleeting, able to define himself as a copy machine of art, sarcastic and
deliberately anonymous, he questions almost every probable fact. The veneer of
normality, the history as written, the common way of understanding nature and
oneself as a part of it.
As he remarks “LosOtros is not an
Artist or a group of Artists... LosOtros is a state of mind that engages a
number of persons.. Not only those that create the Art Works, but also those
that they try to understand them... We believe that Art is not important because
there is an artist behind, but because there is a viewer in front. The meaning
behind an Art Work is the meaning that the viewer build around it. The artist
explanation has a very limited value. We don´t want to promote any manifest,
nor to convince anybody about anything... We are not in Art to promote
ourselves... Art is simply our lifestyle.”.
Depot Gallery
Neofytou Vamva 5
106 74 Kolonaki
Athens
Τ: 210
3648174
e-mail:info@depotgallery.gr
Facebook: depotgallery.gr
Web site: depotgallery.gr
Opening | 31 July 20:00 -23:00
Duration | 31.7 – 06.9
Working Hours | Tuesday to Friday
14:00 – 20:00 + Saturday 11:00 – 15:00
Media | Dimitris Lazarou |
repdla@hotmail.com
Web Site: http://losotros.eu/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/LosOtrosXMjTom
Facebook Event :
https://www.facebook.com/events
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