ZOOMORPHISMS

The Symptom Project

Participating artists: Dimitris Ameladiotis, Dimitris Getsis, Christos Delidimos, Dimitris Fragakis, Maro Michalakakou, Aliki Palaska, Giorgos Papafigos, Panos Sklavenitis, Giorgos Tserionis, Antonis Michaelides, Konstantinos Lianos.

Curated by Apostolis Artinos

October 23 – November 2 / 2025

TAF The Art Foundation

Athens

The present of a form is recognized in these changes, in its past and future records. The form thus becomes a field of ruptures and transformations, its very dialectical tension within historical time. And on the other hand, of course, the morphic excitation has a primordial mythical origin, which supports its ruptured character. There, its horrendous forms are also recognized, when the mythical pours out the magma of the Real onto the relief of our aesthetic refinements. The zoomorphic manifestations have a pre-aesthetic character, because they trace a primordial destiny but also a horizon of poetic flashes. It is in this tension that language is stirred, and the eyes are opened to the cryptic nature of the Other. The Other is not an image, it is not a language, it is a shadow of the visible, this muteness of its form. In this promontory, let us generously recognize in art the echo of a mythical energy, an energy that reveals the forms by clarifying them. The works in the exhibition thus record, in their own unique language, aspects of a scene that comes from the past, from the mythical years, reaches the imaginary of the Middle Ages, the nocturnal outbursts of romanticism, and up to the contemporary dark aspects of our modernity. In the cosmos according to Paul Valley, by Dimitris Ameladiotis, bones of other animals and birds emerge from a shell and articulate, a bony find that demonstrates its otherness as a poetic unity. In the installation Nails, by George Tserionis, the entire sharp environment of the animal is exposed on a scale that could extend to infinity. In Fools without the ship by Panos Sklavenitis, photographic snapshots from performances, where various animal-like “madmen” parade, from mythology, literature and history, references from Ionesco’s rhinoceros, to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Night again.

^{Rain, 2020, oil paint on found paper, 35x30cm}

Another Walpurgisian atmosphere is also traced with his painting by Dimitris Fragakis, a Dionysian dance, in the misty light of a revealing moment, where everything is revealed and everything is simultaneously hidden. Similar traces of the otherworldly are also present in the paintings of Aliki Palaska, where figures from old photographs are diverted into a new apocalyptic field, parodying their immobile presence. And this figure in Guilt #2, by Maro Michalakakou, where does it come from? What does it mean? What hybrid is it that is visible in it? In what space? In what mythical dimension? What life does its subject take on? The identities that manifest here are identities that divert their subject again and again. The Sphinx of Dimitris Getsis, half animal and half human, a mythical enigma, yet another apocalyptic presence. And the Centaur of Konstantinos Ladianos, another borderline creature as it was incarnated in the mythical years. In Look at Yourself, by Christos Delidimos, a human mask that bears the hair of an animal, a repulsive image, but also an image of reconciliation, the hair is from the artist’s pet. In Expectations, by Antonis Michaelides, the ritual African mask manifests the breadth of a mythical thought in the points of a disenchanted present. In New Body II, by George Papafigos, an improvised construction that stems from the aesthetics of the medical environment shapes a dysmorphic presence, a hybrid of the self that finds, in this technophasic habitat, the privilege of a unique manifestation. The work of Konstantinos Lianos seems to come from the same environment, an orphaned relic that testifies to its dual origin, its biogenetic availability.

The exhibition will also feature a series of animal-shaped jugs from the collection of traditional ceramics of Apostolis Artinos.

*In the poster photo, a zoomorphic jug from the village of Poieniţa, Argeş County, Romania. The spout is shaped like the head of a male wild sheep. It is dated 1957. From the collection of Apostolis Artinos.

DIMITRIS FRAGAKIS

ZOOMORPHISMS