Contemporary Greek visual artists and ceramists explore form, texture, and monochromy, highlighting the dynamic potential of matter
The exhibition CHOMA, curated by Iris Kritikou, continues the dialogue initiated with the exhibition MELANA, attempting to map the landscape of contemporary Greek ceramics today, with participants from Northern Greece to Crete, and from Thessaly to the Cyclades, Athens, and Aegina. It is an exhibition of contemporary ceramic art and sculpture which, following the original symbiotic curatorial concept, proposes as its connecting thread a multifaceted aesthetic and symbolic reading of matter and form: the natural color of the selected clay, the warm flesh that breathes and pulses, transformed into a restrained organic field of alchemical and sculptural expression with inexhaustible possibilities.
As the exhibition’s curator notes: “In the exhibition, once again conceived as a multifaceted referential, experimental, and aesthetic space, inspired by the desire to continue the important dialogue on materiality and its magical transformations that developed through MELANA, creations by contemporary Greek ceramists are presented alongside a small core of older works. The main unifying element of the exhibited works is the dominant monochromy of the clay’s body, the almost complete absence of added color or bichromy, and the corresponding emphasis on form; the chthonic, earthy tonality with its many subtle textures and variations; its transformation or its arresting nakedness; the possibility of altering it through different firing methods and temperatures; or the focus on the very idea of the raw condition itself, where this is desired by certain exhibitors.”
