Ύλη[matter]HYLE
November 10th - December 20th, 2015
Entropy is a concept associated with two largely different fields of human thinking, revealing the great importance of this idea in understanding and decoding life, reality and probably everything. In Physics entropy is the tendency of systems to move from order to disorder, from beautifully arranged matter and energy to chaos. It is the tendency of a system to move, to change and to affect other systems around it. In a way entropy in Physics is life itself, it is the generator of history, the constant dynamic change that allows time to exist. For Information Theory entropy is the measure of unpredictability, expressed in statistics as a lack of information, study of parameters, false samples and above all untrue conclusions. But is entropy simply the tendency to disorder or is it the process taking place when elements meet and disperse? Does this meeting alter those elements and in which way?
The meeting between Alexis Akrithakis and Keith Haring was revealed to us from Alexis Akrithakis’ wife Fofi Akrithaki, a true cosmopolitan, who used to own one of the most well known restaurants in Berlin from the early 70s to the late 90s. With a clientele including politicians, actors, directors, artists, musicians, writers and ranging from Ed Kienholz to Heiner Muller and from Andy Warhol to Francis Bacon FOFI’S, her restaurant, was one of the most famous meeting points of exceptional personalities. Artworks of Alexis Akrithakis were often covering the walls of the dining room, catching the glance of international artists, art lovers and artworkers arriving in Berlin. But the unconventional artist prefered to share his time between Athens and Berlin, to hang around with Martin Kippenberger, to be productive and innovative, avoiding systematically his establishment in the art market although he found himself exhibiting in the same gallery like Warhol, the gallery of Alexandre Iolas.
Alexis Akrithakis established his practice through a constant investigation of codes and meticulous processes of personal linguistics. For him access and distribution happened through the multiplicity of transformations. When language is learned, spoken, written and expanded in forms it brings multiple meanings. His bright colors, captured in bold black borders, diminish any impression of self expression and become symbols of the most basic human emotions: love, hate, jealousy, pain. The conquest for all the sides of life. One of the most important letters of his alphabet was the suitcase: the accessory of the traveler, the nomad, the refugee, the constant moving subject that seeks endless travels. The suitcase became his signature and we can find it on prints, on drawings and in furnitures where it became a chair for the passenger to rest.
Keith Haring belongs to a different generation, he was born more or less 20 years after Akrithakis, on a different continent and a different era. His first field of expression was the New York subway system. His marker drawings altered to paintings and popularity came for him along with a certain success in both the art market and the so called post modern painting showcase, thankfully early. In the late 80s he was already travelling in Europe, realizing exhibitions and public artworks including a large public sculpture in Berlin completed in 1987. The human figure outline in the vocabulary of Keith Haring is equivalent to the suitcase in the alphabet of Alexis Akrithakis: letters in anthropomorphic shapes or letters shaped human beings, full of meanings, messages and transmissions. They both report about a world in tension, a divided capital, a country under dictatorship, a contemporary plague that transforms the act of love into a dangerous practice and spreads hate in a society ready to embrace it not only from fear but mostly from ignorance. For both artists making their art popular was a central issue, and it lead them to challenge the singularity of the artwork, making it accessible to everyone, to commerce, a commodity ready to be bought and used by every agent. The quest for broadening the distribution of their work and images was systematic, their creativity expanded, Haring’s Pop Shop establishment in New York and Akrithakis’ creation of lots of artist books, furniture designs and different kinds of merchandise.
With all the above in mind we left entropy to do its job. Or entropy allowed us to do ours. We allowed it to allow us to shuffle the pages of history starting from an eye catching similarity. Both artists are characterised for their love to simple and clear forms ranging from abstract geometrical motives to completely figuratif outlines usually filled with bright but flat colors. Both artists have been described as pop. Both artists were sharing pop characteristics but they were never pop. Purposely the works of the two artists are juxtaposed on top of each, next to each other, as if the works are not here to present the artists' singular practices but to draft their meeting which could be a fiction and a real event.
photo credits: Panos Kokkinias