Alexander Tiliopoulos - opbo studio

ANASTASIA VALSAMAKI W REST L ING

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInNews, StudioOnFebruary 6, 2024March 21, 2024

W REST L ING - ANASTASIA VALSAMAKI

On Saturday, February 10th, at 8pm, Anastasia Valsamaki presents "as she rests, the wrestler bleeds her promises," an exhibition curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. Hosted at opbo studio until March 1st, the show is a presentation of archives, sculptural gestures, films, and words, arising from or responding to the dance performance “W REST L ING”. The performance, conceived and choreographed by Anastasia Valsamaki, will be presented at 9 pm during the opening night.

“W REST L ING” utilises wrestling as a tool to see through the surface of a combat sport and to explore further the seemingly contradictory forces or expressions residing in our ways of acting, enacting, attacking and attracting defense or resistance. It instead aims to unleash the significance of the times, spaces and interactions occurring in-between those modes; to look with them as mechanisms that can feed or disrupt these active dynamics. Thinking through the semantics coming with the verticality of bodies or objects standing or moving, versus their horizontality when laying or standing still, Valsamaki’s work explores the meanings, understandings and interpretations of vitality and alertness, of passivity and inertia, of wrestling and resting.

How do we, human beings, prioritize production over ease or inactivity, idealise proceeding over pausing or staying awake over falling asleep, even when our bodies, minds or souls impose us otherwise? And how can such behaviors, decisions or (in)actions be thought of or be used as parables to think across sociopolitical, environmental, or financial modes, models and paradigms worshiping a nonstop extraction of energy and fuel and love and care, when there’s nothing left, when these graspable or ungraspable commodities, have already been squeezed out or appropriated? How can pauses, breaks and hiatuses allow us to organically touch robust personal transformations, grief over collective alternations, find other ways of striking back or requesting for?

These are some of the questions raised in a work that tries to twist the world, and against all odds, stroke instead of attack, play instead of ambush, dance instead of condemn. Both the choreographed gestures of the five bodies moving and resting in time and space and the traces their presence leaves behind when the performance is over, become a celestial, yet youthful, ecstatic and untamed ritual of sharing anger, sorrow, fear, but also desire, solidarity, kinship. By performing aspects of wrestlers’ fights, “as she rests, the wrestler bleeds her promises” invites us to an acceptance of our contradictions, a close listening of our breathing when in vigilance, an unconditional encounter with our chasms when in turmoil.

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INFO

opbo studio, 86 Filonos Str., Piraeus, 18536
Exhibition opening: Saturday 10 February 2024, 20.00
Exhibition duration: February 10 – March 1, 2024
Visiting hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12:00-18:00
Free entrance

PATAGOS by Sofia Mavragani

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInPress KitOnFebruary 6, 2024February 6, 2024

Performance, Conceived and Choreographed by

Anastasia Valsamaki

Curated by Ioanna Gerakidi

W REST L ING

“W REST L ING” utilises wrestling as a tool to see through the surface of a combat sport and to explore further the seemingly contradictory forces or expressions residing in our ways of acting, enacting, attacking and attracting defense or resistance. It instead aims to unleash the significance of the times, spaces and interactions occurring in-between those modes; to look with them as mechanisms that can feed or disrupt these active dynamics. Thinking through the semantics coming with the verticality of bodies or objects standing or moving, versus their horizontality when laying or standing still, Valsamaki’s work explores the meanings, understandings and interpretations of vitality and alertness, of passivity and inertia, of wrestling and resting.

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PATAGOS – Sofia Mavragani at opbo studio

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInNews, StudioOnJanuary 25, 2024February 6, 2024

PATAGOS - Sofia Mavragani at opbo studio

"Patagos", continuing his international tour and as part of his special presentations, will be "exposed" at opbo studio, for one night only. The dance performance "Patagos" is a noisy story without sound. The texts narrated, the lyrics sung and the rhythms danced by the two performers will never be heard. The two bodies create a muted score that can be "heard" with the eyes. A performance on the borders of dance, theater and music that blurs the boundaries between what we hear and what we see. A silent blast. Choreographer Sophia Mavragani studies, in her works, the musicality of the body and the materiality of the voice, creating paradoxical equations between sound and movement. In Patagos, by eliminating any sound stimulus, she makes movement the exclusive protagonist.

Photos by Margarita Nikitaki

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Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me. | Janis Rafa

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInNews, StudioOnDecember 29, 2023December 29, 2023

Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me.

opbo studio presents a solo exhibition by artist and filmmaker Janis Rafa.
Spoken language rarely features in her evocative films and video installations; she focuses instead on the silent presence of non-humans, allowing them to become the leading force within her poetic compositions. Her narratives emphasise animalistic instincts, untamed behaviours and inabilities to coexist, alongside human fears, expectations and failure.

Rafa’s visual language is filmic and seductive. Yet her work is disquieting: it prompts the viewer to consider pressing questions, such as how humans relate to one another and to the world around them. Her latest works – which premieres at Eye - focus on the tension between care for and exploitation of animals and landscapes, through human inventions and desires.

Rafa’s new work verges on playful eroticism and physical contact, through wordplay and the re-appropriation of utilitarian objects designed to restrain animals. The exhibition title – Janis Rafa – Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me. - encapsulates the underlying sense of melancholia and whimsicalness that is evident throughout her oeuvre.

Rafa’s subjects are positioned within unusual cinematographic compositions that blend the fictional with the mundane. In these timeless spaces, she highlights structures of power, domination and control. The locations she chooses lie on the urban fringes, post-industrial sites, abandoned buildings and decaying agricultural landscapes. Among the ruins of these worlds, she explores themes such as affection for the non-human body, interspecies relations and dealing with loss. Her work forms a wordless ode to stray and domesticated dogs, roadkill, hunted prey, animals in factory farming and other victims of late-capitalist society.

Info:
Location: Eye Filmmuseum, IJpromenade 1, 1031 KT Amsterdam
Duration: October 14 - January 7
Opening hours: Monday, 12:00 - 19:00 | Tuesday - Sunday, 10:00 - 19:00

Mystery 110 Orfeas

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInIn Situ, NewsOnDecember 28, 2023December 29, 2023

Mystery 110 Orfeas

A work in the window of the old cinema Orfeas, next to the archaeological site of Ancient Eleusis.

A narrative through broken images about humanity’s transition from darkness to light. Human beings alone, facing the inevitability of death and the inescapability of life. Wandering, they struggle to free the soul from matter.

Info:
Former Orpheas Store – Entrance Showcase, Dimitros 4, Elefsina
Duration: December 15 - January 14
Opening hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 17:00 - 21:00
Closed: 24/12 & 31/12

Contributors:
Video Installation: Eva Stefani
Curation: George Bekirakis
Line Production: opbo Studio
Editing: Panagiotis Papafragkos

Riddles for resilient tongues | Janis Rafa

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInStudioOnJune 26, 2023June 27, 2023

Riddles for resilient tongues

opbo studio presents Janis Rafa's first solo exhibition in Greece, curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. Under the title Riddles for resilient tongues, the exhibition includes a new series of drawings and sculptural works by the artist where the mouth is perceived as its main axis for exploring issues of power, dominance and submission, and their psychosocial and political cartography, not only among humans but also among all species. Along with these works, Lacerate (2020), the short film by Rafa presented at the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2022, will be presented for the first time in Athens.

Press Kit «LANDS/SexLife»: solo show by Lito Kattou at opbo studio, curated by Ioanna Gerakidi

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInPress KitOnJune 22, 2023February 6, 2024

Curated by

Ioanna Gerakidi

«LANDS/SexLife»: solo show by Lito Kattou at opbo studio

The independent art space opbo studio announces the opening of Lito Kattou’s solo exhibition titled “LANDS/SexLife”, curated by Ioanna Gerakidi, on Friday, June 30th at 8 pm. In LANDS/SexLife, Kattou ponders and expands on the characteristics and symbolisms of the mantis as a species encountering life through survival, sex through shielding, resistance through cannibalism. Through a new body of work consisting of reliefs and other sculptural gestures, Kattou traces the circularity of time as an a-chronical structure, the fatality appended on the femme identity as a parable for protecting life and the landscape as a means for altering the dominant geopolitical narratives.

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opbo studio collaborates with Δαγκάνα for a two-day screening of contemporary Brazilian cinema.

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInNewsOnJune 18, 2023June 18, 2023

opbo studio collaborates with Δαγκάνα for a two-day screening of contemporary Brazilian cinema

Δαγκάνα starts a new film cycle, this time in Piraeus, in the hospitable space of opbo studio, with a two-day summer screening dedicated to contemporary Brazilian cinema, exploring the common anthropological references that define the social identity of the average person today.

Two films will be screened on Sunday 18/6 and Monday 19/6 at 20.30

Sunday 18/6 (20:30): Marte Um - Gabriel Martins, 2022
Monday 19/6: Fogaréu (20:30) - Flávia Neves, 2022

FREE ENTRANCE

A few words about the film weekend at opbo studio

In the last 20 years, Brazilian cinema has experienced a boom, the likes of which have not been seen since the legendary Cinema Novo, when directors such as the pioneers, Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Glauber Rocha, introduced themselves to the world film community with original films of intense socio-political content, full of innovation in cinematic media, creating fresh writing, establishing Brazilian cinema on the world stage.

Trapped by incessant waves of political and economic change, Brazilian cinema has never been stable throughout its life, constantly entering downward spirals that would be salvaged at the last minute each time. The most recent rescue seems to put Brazilian cinema definitively on the road to international recognition.

Dictatorship or democracy, military junta, or parliamentarism, none of these situations seemed to dramatically affect the new reality that Brazilian cinema is evolving into, despite the regressions of its environment.

The inherent weakness of its creative potential also places it in a delicate position in the face of the onslaught of North American over-producers who flood the film world with an oversimplified vision of existence. This weakness, however, seems to have faded over the past fifteen years, thanks to the arrival, on the international scene, of visionary Brazilian filmmakers who dare to unpack their country's problems and produce strong and well-made works. These creators can take credit for the survival of Brazilian cinema.

The turn of the century marked the definitive resurrection of Brazilian cinema with Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lung's Cidade de Deus. Released in 2002, this extremely harsh but beautifully directed film reveals to the world the sordid reality of child gangs in the favelas of Rio in the seventies. Impeccably filmed, the film was nominated for an Oscar. A righteous revenge for a film culture too often suffocated by the Hollywood giant.

This theme of denouncing ultra-violence in the slums of Brazil's mega-cities was first noted in 2007 by José Padilha in the film "Elite Squad". The main difference was that the director focused mainly on trying to describe the harsh working conditions of the police, between the imminent danger of over-armed gangs and the endemic corruption in all functions of the administration.

The data and statistics at the end of the millennium clearly show an improvement in film production and acceptance in cinemas. In ten years, the number of viewers tripled and new directors began to appear regularly, such as Daniel Filho whose film, "Se Eu Fosse Você 2" in 2009, was the biggest national success for a Brazilian film with millions of tickets cut domestically.

More recently, Kleber Mendonça Filho's film "Aquarius" was screened not only in Cannes, but also in his home country, where the warm reception has gone beyond the confines of cinema. The new generation of filmmakers in Brazil, with all its "stars" such as Kleber Mendonça Filho, Lírio Ferreira, Gabriel Mascaro, Maya Da-Rin, and many others - have put Brazil back on the world cinema map in a very convincing way.

Active, committed, and demanding, Brazilian cinema continues to be characterized by sociological critique through dynamic direction and narrative guidance, always with beautiful bright moments even if the subject matter is challenging. It remains charming and mysterious and deserves a new exploration.

Press Kit Opbo Studio Launch

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInPress KitOnMay 17, 2023May 17, 2023

Curated by

Ioanna Gerakidi

opbo studio launch

opbo studio* announces its official launch as an art space with a series of exhibitions curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. The program includes a series of solo shows focusing on the political and poetic qualities of seduction as a means of exploring issues of collective and individual identities. Over these series, seductions will be used as metaphors, aiming to move us, audiences, into unknown spaces, non-linear times, a-rhythmic prays and spells; they long to be touched as diaries of fears and grievances and nightmares, yet also as archives of raptures and laughs, coming when licking our wounds, when “dancing into the ecstatic” quoting the words of Tavia Nyong’o.

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Press Kit Janis Rafa Riddles for resilient tongues

ByAlexander TiliopoulosInPress KitOnMay 17, 2023May 22, 2023

Solo Exhibition

Janis Rafa

Riddles for resilient tongues

13 May – 17 June, 2023,
opbo studio, 86 Filonos, Piraeus, 18536

Riddles for resilient tongues launches opbo studio as an art space with a series of exhibitions curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. The program includes a series of solo shows focusing on the political and poetic qualities of seduction as a means of exploring issues of collective and individual identities.

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