GIANNIS CHEIMONAKIS
KSEFOTO (GLADE)
On Thursday, April 10th, from 18:00 to 21:00, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center presents Giannis Cheimonakis’s first solo show.
The exhibition will be on view until May 31st 2025.
In his first solo exhibition at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, Giannis Cheimonakis presents a collection of paintings and sculptures. It is an installation out of careful gestures and minimalist, linear structures made of wood, ink, and watercolor.
Cheimonakis treats wood as a found material, industrially processed and marked by long years of use. He works on order to decharacterize and reassemble it, restoring something of its natural upright position, its windings, and its imperfections. Through time-consuming and detailed labour, Cheimonakis works “in reverse” by removing the layers of human energies and the accumulation of all the conditions that have altered the wood, ideally approaching the core of its essence and structure. The pieces of an old oak floor are rubbed until all traces are completely removed: decades of endless steps, a weathered varnish, a burst water pipe that caused the wood to warp. Afterwards, everything will be reassembled. Through a different connection, the once “invisible” discarded material will regain some of its key identifying characteristics: a vertical, cylindrical element, like the tree from which it originated (Single-line Sculptures, 2020-2025).
Cheimonakis’s sculptures are intended to stand in space like drawing gestures. The small, identical units of material are connected with several traditional ways of joinery, and the
work is shaped through the minimal necessary structure. His paintings retain something of the nature of technical notes and sketches for intended or imaginary sculptural constructions. Years of drawings in order to achieve the ideal joinery, structure and support can be discerned in the abstract formations of successive, precise brushstrokes. In his series of watercolor or ink on paper, we encounter again corresponding sequences of microscopic, repetitive units that “build,” with meticulous care, almost monochromatic, hypnotic compositions. In a reverse process, this time of accumulation rather than removal, time in the paintings “counts” with each added brushstroke. The nature of the material, after all, does not allow for the overlay or undoing of the gesture.
Giannis Cheimonakis’s artistic practice is distinctively studio-based and it is related to a slow time. His works installed in the exhibition space bear witness to a journey without shortcuts
or detours between contemplation, manual labor, care, and ultimately, enjoyment.
