gb agency

Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain is hosting the first personal exhibition of Apostolos Georgiou in an institution in France. Born in 1952 in Thessaloniki in Greece, Georgiou first studied architecture in Vienna before studying painting in Florence from 1973 to 1975. He lives and works between Athens and the island of Spokelos where he is developing an atypical pictorial œuvre with large format paintings and drawings. His works are in great museums from the Centre Pompidou to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. The exhibition Hello Dog, Hello Sir! presents some twenty recent works. The deliberately absurd title firstly evokes a painting presented in the exhibition but also the grotesque world of the artist in the style of Jacques Tati.

Georgiou’s characters live an extraordinary existence, taking part in situations that are often unexpected and incoherent. The imaginary world is conjured up in little scenes offering as many personal stories as there are viewers. Georgiou likes to talk, to describe details in his paintings, but does not want to impose his own rhetoric or narrative – his works never have a title in order to avoid any parasitic linguistic influence. As a lover of metaphor, he compares a work of art to a lover: there is a unique charm in the relationship between the viewer and the painter.