Stefanos Tzangaloras,
Lateral Sanctuary Door with St. James the Brother of the Lord, 1688

Lateral Sanctuary Door with St James the Brother of the Lord.
The Cretan painter Stephanos Tzangarolas (references 1688-1710), like many other artists, left his homeland after the war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire over Crete, and settled on Corfu. Tzangarolas’ work is distinguished for its strong decorative character combined with the accurate design and the rich colour palette. This lateral Sanctuary Door comes from the church of the Holy Trinity in Corfu.

No title, 2004
video installation
120 x 150 cm

Christina Balli, graduate at the Fine Art Academy of Athens, presents her work which is the fruit of a fertile, systematic, responsible and creative artistic research. With observance and precision she composes bold surfaces with a contemporary, coloured and melancholic poetry.
The exhibited work has been created on the portraits of Antonios Benakis, a different artistic approach on the portraying concept. The images consist of various shapes that refer to the picture concept. The picture gets here another meaning, not so different as for its importance in the human conscience, but with another dimension, more self-controlled, highlighting the great significance of its presence in our life and out of it. Elegant frames keep in central position an empty space that each visitor, according to his experiences and thoughts, fills in with a face and locates it in a lonely place, royal and heavenly. The picture, as a souvenir of a pagan ceremony or a metaphysic conspiracy where passed facts contain the memory of another time, in a rather threatening way, promising possible consequences even after death.

Attic black-figure loutrophoros, 500-490 BC

Attic black-figure loutrophoros with depiction of the prothesis of the dead, on the body, and mourning women, on the neck. Loutrophoroi were used for the nuptial bath and as funerary vases on graves of unmarried youths. Mourning scenes on the body and neck of the vessel illustrate best the dominant role of woman in this funerary ritual. We should assume that this ritual essentially took place with the whole community present. 500-490 BC.

Annalisa Furnari
Born in Vimercate (MI)
She lives and works in Catania

Loredana Longo
Born in Catania
She lives and works in Catania

Giuliana Lo Porto
Born in Catania
She lives and works in Catania

(1)3 unoallaterza,un 2004
videoinstallation

Three women converge towards the center of a light cone and kneel. A man braids their long hair.
The women raise and embracing each other start a dance by at increasing speed until the motion becomes centrifugal and manages to violently unravel their braids. They resume the original triangular position and then move back to the dark. The video installation made by Furnari, Longo and
Lo Porto aims at recreating the climate of the performance in the spectator with the aim of involving
him/her emotionally: a screen ceaselessly repeats the images and the sound and steps of the dance, which is seen from above, very slow and then whirling. The numerous references of this work range from the harmony due to the union of the group, which is expressed by the archaic ritual dances, to the lack of harmony generated by the impossible task of being a group in the contemporary reality, which is individualistic by definition.

Ambra Stazzone

Antonis Benakis (1873-1954) in the Museum
standing in front of the golden Mycenaean cylix from Dendra of Argolis

Scion of a historic family of the Greek diaspora, Antonis Benakis was born in Alexandria in 1873 and was brought up in the still flourishing tradition of good works. At an early age, he began to display an interest in collecting, especially towards eastern art and paintings. Simultaneously there ripened in his mind the idea that he might eventually make a donation of his collections, an idea that led in 1926 to his making Athens his permanent home. Antonis Benakis made a determinate
contribution to the promotion of culture in Greece, with his support of educational and cultural institutions, and to the development of scientific research. He was also actively involved in scouting and sailing. The fundamental feature of Antonis Benakis’ gift remains the assignment to the Greek people in his own lifetime of the Museum he had created. Attention should be drawn also to his unfailing concern till the day of his death in 1954 to secure the most effective
organization of the Museum, its enrichment and endowment.

Benaki's portrait 2004
GPS drawing

Physical exertion and seeking its limits is central to the art of Antti Laitinen. In the Metsän poika (Son of the Woods) series of photographs, the artist portrays his own survival outdoors, without shelter food or clothing. In the photographs of Hikityö (Sweaty Labor) the artist runs in a treadwheel of his own making, after which he presses his sweaty body on photographic paper. At his graduation exhibition for the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Laitinen displayed three stones resembling each other that were placed on pedestals. He had dug up one of the stones in seven minutes, the other in seven hours and the third one in seven days. In Athens, Laitinen caries out a project in which he will run an orienteering course following the outlines of a photograph printed on a map. The route run by the artist will be documented by GPS and marked on paper. Laitinen makes art in which the important consideration is a certain process and its systematic nature. The accomplishment can be seen as a ritual, a means of spiritual cleansing and renewal. He does not produce art, but instead engages himself in hard work for his art.

Henna Paunu

Terracotta statuettes of a Nymph and a Satyr, 3rd-c BC

Terracotta statuettes of a Nymph and a Satyr, parts of a rare and originally integrated 3rd-c. BC composition. Despite the traumatic survival of the two figures and the loss of the colours with which they were originally painted the workmanship is exceptional. Donation by Peggy Zoumboulakis.

Uno, 2004
digital print on aluminum, 100 x 200 cm

Fabio Lattanzi Antinori conceived “Documenta” with an aim between function and form: resuming an emotional reading of the individuals by translating their inner universe into images. The project seeks for some suitably located subjects within the selected context and displays the least visible part of their bodies: an ideal identity card which narrates intimate corners of life through some technological instruments and a pictorially-rooted figurative glance. The subjects are scanned, dissected in a sort of technological surgery and then presented on prints with the addition of writings and of a video support. Following the same principle, the artist connects himself to Benaki, by “reading” sculptures and people of the area in a motivated identity between Mediterranean cultures and evidences of future.

Gianluca Marziani