By Sania Papa for the exhibition: “Democracy: A living word?”

Even in an a-poetic world, big questions do not cease to be raised at great moments
Kostas Axelos

The opening to the future and the enigma of art

Against fixed definitions and predetermined aesthetic classifications, Art and artistic expression today is based on the integration of intercultural knowledge and historical choices, but especially on shifts in data, ruptures and overthrows, stimulating thought to new perceptions, interpretations, approaches, and creative openings. Artists, thus, appear to be the “evil disruptors” who beyond aesthetic constraints, seek pluralism, conflict, open borders between life and art, and especially its multilayered experience.

By expanding and constantly shifting the standards of “behaviour” and “action”, Dimitris Xonoglou does not only approach and interpret the complexities and contradictions of human existence, but also the transference of the very boundaries of art itself, with its “extreme phenomena”. The exhibition Democracy: A living word? proposes possible approaches to the notion of Democracy, the complex alternatingly contradictory emotions that it provokes between memory and recollection, thought and action, action and reaction, tolerance and acceptance; including overcoming the “threat”, as well as the emergence of new bright perspectives to “salvage” the term.

Dimitris Xonoglou’s artistic attitude and actions are clearly radical (at an aesthetic, socio political and historical level). It is thus that he approaches in depth the issue of Democracy as a living word, desiring to catalytically shift the imposed watertight boundaries of “morality” and “order”. His work, to the extent that it disturbs and provokes our perceptions, necessitates a reorientation of, in particular, the viewer’s personal attitudes, and in general, the public’s “social behavior” provided it can operate as an open space for meaningful communication, exchange and unanticipated emotions. The excessive usage and “management” of the term Democracy, presented in numerous versions and various interpretations that are daily imposed on us by the mass media, in all forms of exaggeration of current events, appears to us “denuded” or multi-charged with disparate concepts, and especially, a semantic uncertainty.

Dimitris Xonoglou, with an almost “scientific connoisseurship” hyper-exhibits; through his expression of the Logos of Democracy at multiple levels, heunravels the interpretation of its “unseen” nucleus, and its modified morphological categories.

In a first rendition, the drawings as polymorphic images that “reflect” the Citizens of Democracy respectively, with intense rhythmic expressionism, the doubling of forms, and the transformation of internal dynamic gestures, constitute “open” sets of paintings with specific morphological elements and countless variations of the same subject. The tractive, penetrating and “menacing” power of a look, activates the senses, as well as the sinewy gestural breakdown of the composition, while through the application of “fragmented” colourful collages, points of intensity are created consisting of clashing color and transformations, enhancing the poetry and “transcendentalism” of its form and characteristics. At the centre of this issue, the drawings awaken social memory, while they aim to redefine the characteristics of the alternating hypostasis of the term Democracy, shifting the themes into a constantly renewed field of view.

Dimitris Xonoglou reveals to us the most dynamic metaphors of the term Democracy by activating both the conceptual and painting frameworks, in a spirit of derision and at the same time intense criticism; with acumen and poetic discourse, he displays the disintegrative materiality of the media he uses.

Believing that the power of art is to be found in the principle of denial and the unorthodox, Xonoglou puts forward the idea of the “inexpressible” and transcendental conception of contradictory events and conflicting facts, while silently launching into a frontal attack on the very notion of Democracy, in all its morphological variations. (The Logos Democracy: chains hanging on a wall, upside down menacing screws on a background of texts from the Books of Thucydides’ history, multi-coloured Plexiglass brightly lit with led lights indicating the basic and complementary colours of painting)

According to Albert Einstein, events do not happen. They are there and we come across them on our path, they are the eternal present. There are no contingencies, history is just a long chain reaction. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Harrisburg, Chernobyl, it is the inertia of the moment. The radioactivity of a place is commensurate with the relativity of the moment.
Paul Virilio, The Original Accident

The isothermal blanket with the boxing gloves freely suspended on the wall is a relevant spatio-temporal representation of the Monument to the Unknown Citizens of Democracy with a strong dose of irony and a critical attitude. The “playful” game of silent accusation is displayed and applied by the artist in each one of his compositions. In today’s constant pursuit for the identity of Democracy, which is determined by the constantly changing social and political conjunctures, the Monument to the Unknown Citizens of Democracy awakens ones conscience, as it constitutes an “unwritten” but timely active field of accusation, action and meditation, interlinking the physical with the mental and the spiritual state of the individual.

The invisible centre continually transcends its boundaries, transforming the nucleus of the work in a triadic way (past, present, future). The form of the content jumps from one work to another like a chain, going beyond mere representation. Here, interchangeability is visible as it is constantly being transformed and penetrates the new “poetic” variation. In any case, art itself, through its exploratory process enhances, empowers and “beautifies” the daily practice of a social-political work. Dimitris Xonoglou’s work interprets abstract concepts, conceptual positions and psychological states, such as history, existence, memory, recollection, eternity, love, pain, grief, and loss. Through a plurality of versions, Xonoglou puts forward an exploration of the “topographical” and intellectual space of Democracy and political utopias, as well as the crucial interchangeable issues of dialogue between the social, the cultural, the political, the historical, and the philosophical.

Dr. Sania Papa
Art History Lecturer, School of Visual and Applied Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki