In my work, I try to trust my instincts, which in one way or another… “Axion Esti”. I experimented in several areas of artistic expression, I reflected on the spiritual as well as the practical process of the work. The technical perfection and charm of the material were always in my intentions (my studies in ceramics were helpful). The painting on a canvas, the additions and pasting of objects, they are the beginning of my work and gave me the feeling of my first artistic achievements. From time to time I go back and refer to this section of my work, even to projects that could be characterized as pure environments. My subjects, as far as possible, derive from inner experiences as well as from the realm of my instincts and the unconscious.

I strongly believe in the processing possibilities offered by these areas of our existence, these ontological components of ours, both in terms of objective data and in terms of impressions and feelings. That is, myths, beliefs, biological processes, elements of cosmogenic versions, elements of the archetypal “being”, symbols from secret codes that, however, refer to scientific “signals” in an atmosphere of dreamy savagery.

From all this emerged the dazzlingly intense colors and distortions in the forms I used. In the next section of my work, “Logos”(word-speech), appear forms of huge tongues, elements of delivery of “Logos” and vocalization “output” . From there I am led to the “book” as an object of artistic use. Logos – Languages – Books.

The materials that were dictated to me from time to time for my work, mentioning only a few were: half-burnt or intact books, beeswax, flour, ash, gold leaves, secretions and dead body parts (such as sweat, nails, hair), recorded heartbeats etc. These materials were the result of my internal needs at the time, that is, the moment of the materialization of the project, necessary for the realization of my intangible internal needs. Despite their heterogeneity and diversity they were absolutely essential. I am referring to the “Logos” series of burnt books, where I used the pure wax, the book and fire (it was exhibited for the first time at the North Macedonian Museum in 1988 and at the “Vafopoulio Cultural Center” in 1990). If we accept that the book represents the consciousness of the world, the real consciousness burns as humiliation and shines. It becomes a shadow and a mirror.

In the works entitled “Point – Desert”, exhibited in the art gallery “Mylos” (1993), the reference point was the concept of Wandering. The quests of Wandering, its experiences and in general the journey in the desert. For me, the desert signifies the stigma of departure, of the most essential human margin, where the ways of creation are lost or met. Horizontal and vertical roads. But also dream ladders, signs of rise and fall, means of realization and communication of the earthly with the transcendental. From the vertical direction and the expression of ecstasy and fall, I lead to the functional horizontality of the object – bed, as a meeting place of absence and reflection, dream and purification (Lola Nikolaou Gallery 1995).

Immediately after, my reflection turned to my own artistic past, so that through it, I could answer the question posed to me whilst working on the project Point – Desert. That is, how I would bring the viewer into my work, giving him the opportunity to move within it.

So in 1996, I presented in Copenhagen the installation “My Gold Fridge”. In which my artistic reflections and memories are recorded.

In 1998, at the Lola Nikolaou Gallery, I presented “The Mountain”, a voluminous form covered with gold leaves and chandeliers, purely metaphysical, which, unlike “My Gold Fridge”, forced the viewer to explore it externally.

In my latest work entitled “Tender Ballads for Sensitive Industrialists” (gallery “7” 2000) the works “The Factory”, “The Wave Bed” and “Marx’s Chair” coexist. These are space projects with wood as the basic material, televisions that show video films with selected sounds and images and a book.
A coexistence of anchoring elements, of evolution and progression, where universal symbols and modern technology are used. The “Marx’s Chair” refers to an hourglass, a mirror, a trapping and launching mechanism. The “Wave Bed” is a sinusoidal curve, a spiral evolution, a standing wave.

The “Factory” poses the question: When did the Industrial Revolution end? Are we in the pre-industrial age? Will the Government ever solve the problem of defining man and Machine?

Without being able to determine the next move, all I know is that I am not going to fall victim to a sterile aesthetic formalism but I will pursue my non-negotiable freedom in art.

Thessaloniki, June 2000

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A solitary, independent and self-contained marriage with universality, with ostensibly motley bridesmaids, which compose a diverse common beginning and ending in perpetuity.

With bridesmaids – spearheads of the greatness and tragedy of human existence.

A course that follows the miraculous recovery from biological confinement and leads to an escape from the taboos of convention and from the individual’s confinement in exclusively cognitive experiences.

A course that universally leads to the ultimate glorified symbol of conquest: Alexander The Great.

The light cannot be trapped – it is always diffused.

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The antennas are painted in red, the color with the longest wavelength, so that their receptions are easier to grasp by the limited powers of the brain of those administering the human adventure.

The necessary course of this world, beyond notions of good and evil, with cosmic tolerances and mitigating factors.

The roads in sea and land, as junction fringes of the waves of human actions, committed in the service of the endless concentration and dispersal of the inhabitants of this Earth, sharing as a common place the cradle signified by human presence.

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Thus was established the first democracy in the world.

Really, what happened to all those expensive statues of Papa Stalin?

How I wish I could gather them all together on a hill (the memory of the fall) and on them I could see the airy Maya Pliseskaya leaping to Tchaikovsky’s sounds, balancing on her toes.

Do you know how many painters have balancers and ballerinas as their subject? From what I remember Degas, Toulouse Lautrec, Picasso, Serra…  Max Ernst? No. Van Gogh? No. The one who fed the hungry and full with golden bread and illuminated the whole universe with fiery sunflowers. Dali? Yes, the biggest balancer.

Imagine Daly dying before Gala. How much would she charge for her partner’s mustache? How many multiple copies would be available worldwide? Mustache with fused watches, mustache with ants, mustache with drawers, mustache with beans, double mustache with Garcia Lorca flavor, curled mustache with razors stolen from Bunuel’s bathroom (unique work), mustache with speakers for Amanda Lear’s voice , the crossed mustaches, cross-shaped mustaches, the mustaches of Golgotha, of the Crucifixion in perspective. There is no number… (Countless) … Mustache from aggressive clouds of Fujiyama, mustache from crutches, from Lenin luminous ectoplasms, mustache from Gala’s urine and cellulite, mustache from dollars, from rhino horns, mustache from sea peel, from burning giraffes, from dinosaur’s eggs, mustaches from hardcore elephant  balls, mustaches from diphthong farts, thousands of farts and add even Frida Kahlo’s wheelchair in multiples, while at the Sotheby’s auction were presented seven numbered and gilded condoms of Leonidas Trotski from the heroic and hospitable sharing of the bed with Frida.

When Daly died, the incident was considered an accident and not the natural end of an elderly man. Then a well-hidden secret was revealed. One leg of the artist was made of wood full of holes that were used as nests by five red-skinned lobsters, while the other leg was watery and small sea turtles swam in, feeding themselves from the royal plankton of his brainstorms.

Before giving up his last breath, Daly took out his eyes, cooked them like poached eggs and swallowed them, so that no one could use them to see the world as he saw it. Another event that left those who happened to be near him speechless is the following;  in the last moments of his life from his left ass cheek  sprouted a huge narcissus with hundreds of stamens full of pollen, while thousands of swarms of bees appeared from the four points of the horizon claiming a small portion of Salvatore’s nectar.

This caused the temporary closure of the borders with other countries, the fall of dictator Franco, while the supreme council of the tectonic gallery of Spain resigned as a whole, because it was considered responsible for rejecting the painter’s application to enter it, on the grounds that the applicant lacks morals and is characterized as a disrespectful and great masturbator: as an exploiter of very clever poultry, as a pimp of young workers using the huge chocolate cock of William Tellos… as a snail trainer with Machiavellian fanaticism. He was also accused of being a dodecatheist, because he wrote prayers for Gala-Aphrodite, Gala-Apollo, Gala-Hera, Gala-Hephaestus, Gala-Hermes, Gala-Athena, Gala-Quasimodo, Gala-Ludovico, Gala-Gala etc.

He was also considered a blasphemer because he wrote a scientific dissertation on the Fart and its evolution from antiquity to the twentieth century, while the concert in favor of deafness, dedicated to the dead soldiers of the Albanian Front in 1940, was presented with great success by the New Orleans Negro Musicians Orchestra.

A secret admirer of the Marquis de Sade, Vermeer, Nebuchadnezzar and Nargis, he went down to Port Ligat beach at night with a light bulb and urged local fishermen to have constant intercourse with Gala in exchange for pennies, while he was calmly modeling the robust portrait of Mao’s widow, modeled on the bloodied head of Marie Antoinette, the deadly arrow from the heel of Achilles, the umbilical cord of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and a glass of warm milk from the camels of El-Alamein.

At dawn he went up to the monastery of Agia Skepi and ate breakfast with the nuns, soup of mashed horses of Saint Mary with holy water and curry. He then confessed his sins to the beautiful peacocks in the yard and returned home relaxed to fight the ghosts of Andre Breton, Jerome Boss and Louisa Bourgeois’ giant spider.

Do you know how many political leaders failed miserably because they could not manage their “ego” and how many people went crazy and committed suicide out of selfishness? Countless … There is no number …

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Dozens of art critics have been arguing since then about whether Marcel himself secretly put British sour cream or sugar cubes in the gas tank of the crashed car, like Papadopoulos in Evros, or possibly hair from the sarcophagus of Joan of Arc. One thing is for sure: Jackson Pollock became the great hero of American art, not like our “little ones”, Athanasios Diakos, for example, who was simply “impaled in Alamana for freedom” by the Turks, as reported by the press agency of Athens, even though the earth has stopped growing grass for so many years in the place where they killed him, even the sun stops there for a minute of silence, in his honor . Thermopylae is also nearby, many times passers-by see the 300 with Leonidas taking their bath.

Duchamp died in 1968, and many have applauded his decision. Church bells rang all over the world, in Beijing Mao Zedong went on an hour-long hunger strike, in Paris the Virgin Mary performed a miracle, Kambouris was resurrected and began ringing the bells whilst Igor Stravinsky converted the sounds into musical notes. Marina Abramovic took a deep breath and climbed barefoot the stairs with the knives without injuring herself, tied her pigtail to her grandfather’s beard and was left to his lullaby of the “Akathist Hymn”. As soon as Picasso heard the news, he fell into a deep depression, isolated himself into his studio and started working feverishly on “Suite 347″, leaving people speechless. From the many sorrows, Raphael humps Fornarina, the pope has a craving and Michalakis is watching them from under the bed. Kazantzidis on all the radios, singing at high volume the song ” sadness”, Kounellis feeds the horses that he will exhibit in Attico, while his sacks of charcoal, beans, cotton and lentils are ready. The coal matrix of the earth as the word of Pythia, and John the most romantic, the last of the Moikans.

No, I never liked Duchamp. Disliked and dirty and snobby, he was so full of himself, but also others thought highly of him. Then they embalmed him, put him in a bowl and worshiped him like Lenin and Stalin. He is a little man, a giant, but a little man.

My friends, a piece of charcoal contains the design recorded in its geological age and is released when the charcoal breaks into pieces in front of Wassily Kandinsky’s left toenail, then passes through Kazimir Malevich’s black stomach and comes out like a grenade launcher in the look of Pablo Picasso’s eyes.

Dimitris Xonoglou
January 2011

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The Virgin Mary returned holding in her hands the stolen bowl with the tongue of Saint Anthony, the Portuguese, PADOVA, who was a friend of Fernando Pessoa and a friend of Italo Calvino, of Antonio Albanese of Don Corleone, Martin Scorsese and of Dolores Ibarruri.

The tongue of the Saint, quite afflicted, could not make a sound. He was breathing heavily and was drowning, his vocal cords atrophied. Demosthenes bent down, took two pebbles and told him to turn them in the half part of his mouth until he could say “ro”. So it happened. Then the Virgin took her place on the table.

Three angels took care of the Holy Family’s trip, “the flight into Egypt” was ridden on nine dolphins. One for Joseph, one for Maria, one for baby Christ and six for Mitsos the donkey, because he was heavy and afraid of sirens. On the way, Virgin Mary felt dizzy and baby Christ vomited the milk that he had been suckling, a while ago, off the coast of Sicily. The vomit was devoured by thousands of fish, illuminating the shores of the Mediterranean and all the open seas. The seas calmed down, the sharks ate only plankton and the octopuses came ashore and climbed to the charcoal grill on their own, smiling. The blessing of the vomit reached Sumatra, the North Pole, Chile, Korea, everywhere… especially the port of Izmir (Smyrna).

The Turks entered the city Saturday, August 27th – September 9th, 1922. The atrocities against the Christian population culminated in the symbolic and ritual torture and death of Chrysostom, Bishop of Smyrna, on Sunday, August 28th – September 10th, 1922, then the fire broke out.

The city was burning, Virgin Mary spread her arms, hugged all the children who lost their parents, fed them, put them on the ships and returned to her family. The tears of the Virgin Mary in the port of Smyrna created two huge water suckers like wells that are still boiling. The approaching ships burn their sides and the fish come out fried and delicious. In the south of Crete, Christ dove into the sea as far as Alexandria. There they slept in an inn and the next day they visited Cavafy’s house and the City Library. Christ in the entry of his name found the whole Bible almost like the Bible (???), and all the bibliography that referred to him and various other “Christ” through the centuries, thieves and swindlers, magicians and charlatans. He blessed the library and left. Then they passed by the tomb of Alexander the Great and lit a candle.

On the way to Cairo, they stopped at an oasis to rest. There… Oh the miracle! the baby began to eat with his hands from the plate of Joseph tzatziki with garlic, since then tzatziki became the favorite food of the Godman throughout his life. In Cairo they stayed in a tent among the protesters who settled in Tahrir Square. Everyone was talking about a female doctor caring for the wounded, when Mubarak and his government fell from power, they lost them.
The news spread quickly, Pieta changed shape, Christ cut his hair, put on a suit and his mom was not her but she was another, a skull. The Venetians got confused, the Cardinal of Venice delivered a speech against everyone in charge, it was July and the aqua alta filled San Marco two meters, the tourists stopped speaking their language and spoke only one, the language of worry and fear, the Art historians smiled happily.
Thessaloniki, Florence, Venice. In Florence in the Uffizi I saw Dürer painting “The Adoration of the Magi”. When he finished he came with us to Venice. At one point, he complained that the copies of Adam and Eve were mediocre, the “apple” that Eve was holding looked more like a salami. We sat side by side in the bus, he slept almost all the way. When he was awake, he was looking inside and outside, he was not talking much.

I got off the hotel elevator with a Japanese man who may have been Mexican, a friend of Emiliano Zapata. At the breakfast table I sat with Harry, Dürer, a Mexican who may have been Japanese, a friend of Hirohige, and a 17th-century Venetian man, Tintoretto’s son, and his grandson. In the Church of Santa Maria della Mizericordia four huge brains breathed slowly and steadily, ignoring our presence. In the background there was the Pieta.

The little one was running like he was under a spell between the brains and every time he touched one, the brain turned to stone. When he saw the turtles he was ecstatic, he took them in his arms, they ejaculated and turned upside down. He cried in front of Pieta so hard that his cries were heard as far as Punta Della Dogana, his body filled with hundreds of red pimples. At the hospital, doctors diagnosed measles with shock. “Ah, these craftsmen from the underworld,” exclaimed Dürer, “always merchants, atheists and traitors.” On the way back, Tintoretto’s son shouted with all his voice: “Jan Fabre, open the door to LIFE, open the door… open the door… open the door… open the…”

At night it is impossible to sleep. Curses came to me spontaneously, which are not curses: “pigeonballs, menopause butterfly, noble nightballs, cow-pussy, pussyhorn, small and strawberry-like pussy, etc.

July 2011
Dimitris Xonoglou

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As a gesture of thanks, I made you a magic car, a smart. It listens to all your desires and it fulfills them. It can be minimized so you can carry it in your bag or be transformed to the most comfortable racing car, it does not need gasoline or oil, it works with your breath. It has the ability to spread its wings so you can fly in the colorful skies of Kandinsky that you like so much or land in the Sahara of visual reality and like another Robinhood search for an oasis of artists and sponsors. Or it can even be a microphone in a left psalter and like a humble “queen of Sava”, to sweeten our anxieties with your psalms. This smart, knows how to talk and how to listen, you can entrust your ghosts on it and it will drive them away, it can get angry if you want, scream, become melodic and unruly.

Xanthippi, I left the keys in that closet of your intellect and your special psyche.

With love
Dimitris Xonoglou
Thessaloniki 2011

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Yes, like the Elder who, while talking to us in his yard, at the same time and moment some people can see him in Alexandroupolis pulling out of the wheels of a truck a child safe and sound. Or like someone else who while talking about wines, his handfuls get filled with the tears of an underage prostitute in Bangkok.

Tell me please, can you see the East in two different places at the same time? No, either you see her with Those who walk on the waves all over the world, or you see her at half past dawn, after spending the night and drinking, sinful and rash.

What can I tell you, it may be the fault of “the metaphysical muse” of De Chirico, who on her first trip with the cog in Pelion, immediately became the mistress of the Centaurs.

One thing is for sure, the best bottle in the world is what Umberto Boccioni΄ made. What a great piece of work! “Whispers through command” as arrogant village people would say, but also Severini, Carlo Carra and Balla, a ball from Napoli to Milan and from Syracuse to Genoa for Marinetti to play when he throws his arlumbs like Aphrodite who emerged from the muddy waters, ecstatic by the caterpillars of the tanks, the lover of fascism, audacious and greedy in the stench of the machine gunners.

The most subversive work of recent years, is the missed penalty of the little Buddha, Robertino, who plunged the whole of Italy into such a futuristic depression, which spread to the plains of Argentina and withered thousands of acres of colored tulips in the Netherlands. Max Van der Stoel in resignation, and Queen Julianna in a tearful cry with hot tears, piercing her fitted suit, turning it into a strainer and the ladies at the prices, running to cover with Lockheed bonds all her holes, where fingers could fit. And not only that, myriads of ranas came out of the canals shouting but Jessye Norman golden-green melodies, scaring the little green Dutch women, even Rumenigge across the border.

My God, what times! I try to put things in order, and Luigi falls in front of me “tonight we are improvising” like the Athenian government, whilst Jaqueline de Romilly from the Elysium cries “Thucydides is the man I love and I consider him to be my husband”.

Fourteen words with which a small nightingale made a nest.

December 2010
Dimitris Xonoglou

*some thoughts on Futurism

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– Reeds from the banks of the Nile at the time when Pharaoh’s daughter found Moses in his basket in the river kennels; brought from her space trip by Valentina Tereskova.

– Treated crocodile spleen skin dyed red with pigeon blood.

– white chimpanzee nerves.

– handles of unknown material made by virgin Chinese women in their white boots, as Cuban girls shape cigars to the sounds of Fidel Castro ‘s eight – hour speech.

– Gold leaf from the ancient mines of Paggaio.

– Venice blown glass made by 15th century monks; beer contains St. Francis saliva and St. Paraskevi tears.

– Iron cap from the shield of Achilles and stolen spokes from the bicycle wheel of Marcel Duchamp.

– The book of the work is from handmade paper found in the southern loophole of the left tower in Ano Poli, a dissertation in the cardiology of the eminent doctor Panteleimon; rumors say that the book was printed by Gutenberg himself, and was carefully studied by his sister sunbathed on the rocks of the old beach. Later she went up and lit the candles on the Virgin Mary Right and plugged her ears with Ukrainian walnut kernels to avoid the glycologists of foolish cantors.

– Many times the balance of the project is interrupted by the raid of hundreds of police officers with globes, tear gas and cluster grenades in the alleys of the city and is restored by the assistance of fishermen runners of the Amvrakikos gulf.

For any mechanical damage to the project, the city’s crews remain open around the clock.

The biological damage of the artist …………..

First degraded year of the seventh Peloponnesian War, 2010.

The survivor

(See the project HERE)

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Football is a substitute for dead-end lives, an amazing pill to relax orderly nerves, a generative process of important mental processes, in which the uneducated can participate successfully and uneducated.

Football is the magic key to opening entrances to areas where life is not lifeless.

Football is a place of tolerance under conditions of violent homosexual sexual harassment.

Football is a means of cultivating nationalist tendencies or internationalist perceptions at the behest of the rulers.

The football is a means of getting lost in the aesthetics of the movement of the feline movement.

A football match, a painful reminder of the flight of the lost bird of youth.

A football match, a game of crickets exposed to the most unexpected upheavals.

A vertical wall of balls in an unstable balance between them, defining as solid the boundary between success and the inevitable. A frame of the portrait of the final executor of the impulse.

Dimitris Xonoglou, 2005

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