Eins Gallery will participate in the 43rd edition of ARCO Madrid, with a duo presentation by Cypriot artists Stelios Kallinikou and Leontios Toumpouris.
According to a press release, Eins will take part in the Opening section, curated by Cristina Anglada and Yina Jiménez Suriel, which will present a selection of young galleries.
With references to nature, ecology, the animal kingdom and the earth, the exhibition suggests methods of understanding, recording and co-existing with living and non-living matter.
Within the works of Toumpouris and Kallinikou, representation, abstraction, transparency, movement and sound create the conditions for reading and managing the rhythm and pulse that exist in the natural landscape and by extension within us.
In Kallinikou’s series of archival pigment photographs titled ‘Glass Cage Dream’, the fragility of the photographic image is likened to the disappearing relationship between the photographer and their subject. The photographs go through a process of printing and reprinting, sometimes from digitally corrupted files to make each image less readable. The photographs replace the object’s true nature with its reproduced image through a process which incorporates refined particles of pigment that are resilient to environmental elements that commonly degrade dye molecules. The disappearance is exposed and intimate, and its natural subjects are more receptive to the urgency to connect with the viewer’s corporeal existence.
Toumpouris’ focal points of matter, body and land are unequivocally associated with the earth’s motion. His experience of land in the form of filming and sculpting includes the materiality of the earth; ores, fossils, metals and glass. The human body draws its energy from the earth’s body and is captured through sculptural gestures where worked clay leaves its traces on glass. The series ‘In temporality’, encompasses ores and rocks he has collected and examined through his filming process that are bound to laser engraved stainless steel. In its entirety, the work suggests the coexistence and connection with beings within the natural landscape, as well as an emotional perception of land.
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Stelios Kallinikou (b. 1985, Limassol, Cyprus) presents sequences of imagery that flow into interlaced dialogues, whilst examining different themes such as politics, colonialism, the environment, technology, spirituality, and the power of images. Through photography, video and sound, he constructs worlds with an introspective, reflective rhythm, which function as hypothetical scenarios through which to explore the relationships of territorial and ideological concepts related to the earth and the body – such as space/place and time/history.
His work has been presented in solo exhibitions and group shows at SPEL, State Gallery of Contemporary Art, Nicosia, Cyprus (2023); Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Baden Baden, Germany (2022); 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ekaterinburg, Russia (2021); Goethe-Institut Zypern, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); Grey Noise, Dubai, UAE (2021); Saigon, Athens, Greece (2021); Phenomenon, Αnafi, Greece (2019); MOMus – Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (2019); NiMAC, Nicosia, Cyprus (2018); Foam Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece (2017); Point Centre of Contemporary Art, Nicosia, Cyprus (2017); Equilibrists, organised by the New Museum, New York and the DESTE Foundation, Athens, Greece (2016). Kallinikou was a resident at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2018-2019). He is the co-founder of Thkio Ppalies Project Space, based in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Leontios Toumpouris (b. 1982, Nicosia, Cyprus) is an artist currently based in Nicosia. In 2016 he graduated from Glasgow School of Art’s MLitt Sculpture and from the Painting department of Athens School of Fine Arts in 2009. In his practice, Toumpouris invents systems of correlations between matter, body and land. He constructs linguistic speculations and instances of interaction through fiction and relationality. Drawing from organic structures, traditions of depiction and discursive practices, Toumpouris configures his work in sculpture, site-responsive installation, text, sound, moving image and performative gestures.
Recent solo exhibitions and projects: With mountains, and stars, and particles, eins gallery, Limassol (2023); Briefly eternal, Art-o-rama, Marseille (2022); Reconfiguring motions, Korai, Nicosia (2022); Palimpsest of voices, Glasgow International, Glasgow (2021); SOM, eins gallery, Limassol (2020); Relations reversed, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia (2019); Of particular images, Intermedia gallery, CCA, Glasgow (2019); Phyle, Custom Lane, Edinburgh, curated by Eoin Dara (2018).
