ANTONIS APERGIS, Artist
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Copyright art and photos © 2000 Antonis Apergis
BIOGRAPHIE
Born in Athens, Greece
1958-1962 Studied art with I. Moralis and etching with K. Grammatopoulos at the School of Fine Arts, Athens, Greece.
1966-1970 Awarded a scholarship from the National Institute of Scholarships (I.K.Y.) to study mosaic and fresco at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, France.
Solo Exhibitions
1965 Gallery K.T.E., Athens
1969 Gallery Astor, Athens
1973 Gallery Nees Morfes, Athens
1976 Gallery Argo, Athens
1977 Gallery Promotion of Contemporary Art, Athens
1978 Gallery Panselinos, Salonica
1979 Gallery Promotion of Contemporary Art, Athens
1980 Athens College, Athens
1982 Gallery Argo, Athens
1984 Gallery Ekfrasis, Athens
1985 Gallery Hyakinthos, Athens
1988 Gallery Epoches, Kifisia
1990 Gallery Art Forum, Salonica
1992 Gallery Prisma, Livadia
1993 Gallery Agathi, Athens
1993 Gallery Tou Notou, Pireus
1993 Gallery Argo, Nicosia
1994 Gallery Art Forum, Salonica
1996 Gallery Tis Ersis, Athens
1997 Gallery Agathi, Athens
1998 Gallery Kreonides, Athens
1998 Cyclades Gallery, Syros
1999 Gallery Polygnotos, Crete
1999 Gallery K, London
Selected Group Exhibitions
1960 Young Artists Exhibitions, Rome
1961 Students Exhibition, Etching Prize, French Institute, Athens
1961 Young Artists Exhibition, Etching, Beirut
1961 Third National Students Exhibition, First Prize for Art, Hellenic American Union, Athens
1965 Group Exhibition, Gallery K.T.E., Athens
1968 Mosaic Exhibition, Paris Group Exhibition at Gallery Ora, Nees Morphes, Athens
1971 Two Converging Exhibitions at Gallery Nees Morphes, Hilton, Athens
1972 Group Exhibition at Gallery Ora, Nees Morphes, Athens
1973 Group Exhibition at Gallery Ora, Nees Morphes, Athens
1974 Exhibition at the Tower of Athens, Athens
1974 Greek ContemporaryArt, An exhibition of painting, sculpture and etching, Chicago
1974 Group Exhibition, Gallery Tholos, Athens
1976 Group Exhibition, Gallery Arrnos, Athens
1977 Three Modem Greek Painters, Apergis, Zoumboulakis, Karavouzis, Gallery Artistic
1977 Baak Gallery, Massachusetts
1979 Exhibition of Paintings, Gallery Studio, Athens
1979 Exhibition of Etchings, Gallery Studio, Athens
1979 Ceramic Drawings, Gallery Polyplano, Athens
1979 Painting, Gallery Polyplano, Athens
1976-83 Group Painting Exhibitions, Gallery Argo, Athens
1981 Greek Contemporary Painters and Etchers, Nicosia
1982 Tapestry Drawing, Gallery Polyplano, Athens
1982-83 Exhibition at Gallery Nees Morphes,
1982 Painting and Etching Exhibition, Gallery Kosmos, Athens
1982 Salon des Comparaisons, Paris
1982 Painting Exh~ifion, Karditsa
1982 Group Exhibition, Gallery Sylogi, Athens
1983 Exhibition of Greek Painters, Vienna
1983 Exhibition of Greek Painters, Nicosia
1983 Exhibition of Greek Painters, Limassol
1984 "An exhibition of Surrealist Painters", Gallery Epoches, Athens
1984 Group Exhibition, Rhodes Gallery, Rhodes
Public and Private Collections
National Gallery of Athens
Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros
Museum Kotopouli
Museum of Kalamata
Museum of Patras
Museum Vore, Paiania, Attica
The collection of National Bank of Greece, Kastoria
Museum Averof, Metsovo
Ch. Antoniou, Th. Portalaki, A. Galouni, K. Ioannides, A. Vergou, N. Grigoriades, K. Milona, N. Diamantides, A. Michailides, E. Agiannides.
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TEXT
Interlaces
The fragmentation of the images of Antonis Apergis functions like copulative links in a sentence. Derived from life experiences, memories, senses and observations regarding the ruins and the cross-cultural debris, these images arise to the forefront of the stage through the intertwining of the layers. In such instances, the spectator gets the impression of peeling back a wall, and discovering in the lower layers, images as they would be formed by decay or by the water of rain, whose drops are purifying the dust of the years and the longing of ancient performances.
Colours, tones and undertones rise towards the surface from the depth of time, decay and distance. Shines, tints and highlights come together in order to complement, interact and counter-define one another, creating a special atmosphere, a unique environment, a characteristic condition, through which the elusive forms of the past appear to be relating to the continuous and sometimes radical and unexpected changes that define the present.
The Kavafian lyric The Month of Athyr, "En to mini Athir", which lends its name to this series of works by Antonis Apergis, neglects "Lefkios" who then "fell asleep". Here, the particular visual reference leads to the images of the layers of civilisation which have been covered, forgotten and were at some stage lost in the blankness of oblivion, yet they are always discernible, present and visible in the dismantling of time. Colour, gesture, memory sequence and time intertwine and identify with the act of painting, which makes its presence tangible as this returns through the blankness of the beginning of its intentions. The artist can iconographically compose in a net, the progressive findings that he encounters through the process of searching in the depth of a collective heritage.
For his iconographic compositions, the artist draws up, via a counter- balancing between realistic depictions and expressionistic gestures, elements from the ancient Greek tradition, the Alexandrian era, Byzantium, Renaissance and the 19th Century Neo-Classicism. These elements are distinguished and interwoven with the impressions of graphic design of advertising found today, with its letter characters and fleeting messages as the sweeping speed of the gaze transcends the latent without restraining them.
Illustrative types and writing have completely lost their senders and receivers. They meet in suspense in the space, emerging, vanishing and re-naming through the working of time, the elliptical images. These images which mime movements, pauses, actions and acts have migrated like birds, leaving in memory something of their winging and their singing.
Antonis Apergis, through the dialogue of themes, images, writings and performances unifies and re-transfers the internal and the external space, the nature of the environment and that of consciousness and also the light which is visible and the spiritual vision. In doing this he is creating, through the vehicle of the optical approach, a stimulus for thought.
The works of art become windows for the vision, in order to trace the deepest truths of the enigmas of reality. The narration of the interconnected sections and reconstructed fragments of reality (which have been observable also in previous collections of the artist) in this series of works appear more cohesive, with a deeper linking and a greater developing clarity. The simplicity and the immediacy of the depictions in the way they appear, pre-suppose a more complex internal mechanism of the overlapping of one plan towards another, of the one presence into the next. It is as if this co-existence has been caused by chance or by the peculiar coincidence of a predestined moment of the unexpected meetings and reshaping between yesterday and today.
The dialectic perspective of the levels of space and the hearths of light, create together, with the plasticity of volume and the reminding of fearfulness and of distance, the peaceful no man's land atmosphere. Here everything is lighting "all of a sudden", but ends up being lost in the darkness, by the monumentalising of their elusive and fleeting presence.
The Month of Athyr, "En to mini Athir", of some forgotten era where suddenly everything is motionless and lost like in Pompeii, Lefkios, the lost and unwritten as a whole "image", reappears bringing together triumphantly an old elegy where the facing of its idols are reflected in the new nature of the circles of life and in the routes of time, which unravels in front of the eyes of the spectator, like a film with countless episodes. Episodes which have left behind them the enigmatic nature, and have done so in order to transplant something of its magic and its mystery, something from monumentality and vanity, something from the appearance and from its charming hallucination, from the unredeemed trauma of an unjustified act and transubstantiation.
Athina Schina
