The online platform, To Pikap Community – Αrt in Thessaloniki, for the first time, travels and presents to the Athenian audience a live and interactive project in actual space. 34 artworks of the most recent visual production of the city form the core of the exhibition entitled Visual meets Vinyl that will be on show from February 15 to March 8, 2020, at the venue of Τhe Project Gallery
Opening: Saturday, February 15, 20:00-23:30
Exhibition Duration: 15-2-2020 until 8-3-2020
Curators: Dimitris Aggelis, art director of “To Pikap Community” in collaboration with Domna Gounari, art-curator of exhibitions and performances of contemporary art.
In the past decades, many exhibitions have been organized under the theme of multifaceted character of vinyl records and their relation to visual arts: from the early age of vinyl production at the end of the 1940’s, to the end of the 1960s that due to technological developments formed the peak period of its performance, through the early 1980’s, the period of its decadence, and until its recent commercial reappearance. Vinyl Records have influenced to a great extend the artistic oeuvre of both renowned and young artists who, in many occasions, have placed them at the center of their artistic creation.
Renown visual artists have created the covers of the most successful music productions: in 1955 Salvador Dali for Jackie Gleason, in 1967 Andy Warhol for Velvet Underground, in 1983 Keith Haring for David Bowie, in 1984 Jean-Michel Basquiat for The Offs, in 2003 Robert Rauschenberg for the Talking Heads, in 2011 Banksy for the Blur, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have collaborated with Damien Hirst etc. In parallel, contemporary exhibitions highlighted the connection between visual artists and musicians. Mainly in the 1960s, pop and rock music performers collaborated closely with visual artists in the creation of the most subversive, radical and avant-garde covers while at the same time, young, underground musicians are recognized not only for the quality of their music but also for the exquisite visual creation that comes with it.
In contrast to the above practice, the exhibition Visual meets vinyl focuses on artistic creations that, have been materialized through the study of a specific Record Album cover, of its music content and the artistic profile of the musician. 34 artists choose among their favorite vinyl-records and are inspired from them in order to create new artwork using multiple of expressive mediums: painting, photography, installation, drawing, itching, sculpture and video. The exhibition aims to introduce to a wider audience the recent artistic production together with the musical and visual source of inspiration behind each artwork and also highlight the current contemporary art scene of Thessaloniki.
