The thorn of beauty | Despina Meimaroglou / Eleni Lyra

Opening: September 21st | 20:00
Duration exhibition: September 21st – October 19th, 2012
Curated by: Apostolis Artinos

Beton 7 Gallery presents Despina Meimaroglou’s and Eleni Lyra’s exhibition, entitled “The thorn of beauty” curated by Apostolis Artinos.

In Eleni Lyra’s work resides the aura of a silence, the silence of the angels. Lyra’s “Archangels” (1998) are effigies that though represented they are not secularized, they just remain grounded on that diluvial element that insinuates them. Their embodiment thus becomes the harbinger of an unearthly beauty, the ability of a primal  return of the world to that, which is not the world itself but an image of the world, a natal image of beauty. A beauty though that is stretched within its ecstatic aporia, within its cosmic unavailability. The angels thus, although represented, they are not present, they remain captives to that beauty, spectral entities, parasites, shadows. They become thus incidental existences, figures that reverse the language in the horizon of the constantly powerless language, of that which is the powerful silence of the other.

Unlike the above imagery Despina Meimaroglou’s angels derive from the abyss of the media instead of the allure of the skies. They are no angels of the divine passion but angels of the evil, angels - victims of the evil. Meimaroglou’s fallen angels present their social content’s ambiguity, they levitate on that border between their symbolic and their real field, on the brutality of their representational scale. They are angles that fell from their unhistorical position in the course of history, moved through out time. And due to this reason they lost their angelic beauty as well, now being bleeding wounds, annulled existences, deprived of their celestial world.

Apostolis Artinos 

Artist Talks | Τuesday October 16th 2012, 18.00
Despina Meimaroglou, Eleni Lyra and Apostolis Artinos, curator of the exhibition "The thorn of beauty", will discuss about their work on Tuesday October 16th, at 18:00, at Beton7.