For ART-O-RAMA, Despina Charitonidi presents a series of sculptural gestures that accentuate the dominance of primordial natural materials employed in urban construction sites. Her tendency to study the properties of these materials emphasises an intimate curiosity for creating man-made and temporal geological cartographies.
Dotted within the space are iron rods, sprouting from the ground up, blooming into rusted seashells. At the centre of the booth lies an eroded aerated concrete block resembling a bleached coral. In the foreground, a wall relief diptych signifies the imprinted corrosion caused by Charitonidis’ chemical experiments to compress and bend time.
With properties originating from the core of the earth, the works become a metaphor for our attempts to reconcile human intervention with our ecology. Charitonidi, by compressing two thousand years of natural decline into twenty hours, simulating the passage of time, evokes the brutality and narcissism of our urban gentrification and the ensuing radical environmental degradation of our times.
Art-o-rama 2023 opening hours:
31st of August, Thursday, 17:00 – 22:00
1st until 3rd of September, Friday – Sunday, 14:00 – 19:00
For more information please visit https://art-o-rama.fr/.