IDÉES FIXES: THINGS

Participating Artists: Eugenia Apostolou, Dimitris Christidis, Dimitris Fragakis, Vangelis Gokas, Anestis Ioannou, Nikos Kanarelis, Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, Panagiotis Kefalas, Melina Mosland, Poka-Yio, Fotini Poulia, Anna Samara, Evi Zampeli

12 June – 27 July 2024

CRUX Galerie

Athens

Crux Galerie is happy to present the group exhibition “Idées Fixes: Things”. Obsessions and things, or how obsessions and personal narratives reinterpret every-day and familiar objects. A series of objects from the margins of our life and perception are transformed into “things” that carry mythologies, emotional load, narrate a personal or symbolic story and are ultimately transformed into literary heroes. They transcend their functional role and are placed in unexpected contexts.

The term idée fixe, which describes the use of recurring motifs in a literary work, has been used in psychology to suggest obsessive thoughts that influence and determine our behaviour. Often the obsessive subject turns to the search for an external stimulus, which comes in the form of a physical object. The mundane and everyday object may turn into a fetish, or a “thing” with special significance. Thing theory, originated from Heidegger and mostly discussed later by Bill Brown, analyses the meaning of objects and their associations to people.

These repeated subject-object correlations cannot but include the artists’ unbreakable interconnection to the things that enter their field of observation. Visual art in particular has the power to transform objects, attaching special and unexpected meaning to them. For the group exhibition “Idées Fixes: Things” Crux Galerie selects artworks, mostly paintings, by contemporary Greek artists who place “things” at the centre of their interest and of our attention.