SOLO SHOWS

2004 Pediments, Gazon Rouge Gallery, Athens

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)

2008 Capsula, curated by Polina Kyritsopoulou, Berlin
        Donna Martin Graduates!, curated by Antonakis Christodoulou, Exerevnitis, Athens
        MI2, curated by Konstantinos Dagritzikos, K44, Athens
        One Eighth Moon Festival, curated by Piper Mavis and Sunee Markosov,
         76 Kingsland Road Space, London

2007 Feet, curated by Konstantinos Dagritzikos, www.bigprojectspace.com
        Open Air Screening Room, RemapKM¨, Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens
        Banal Circus, Novas Contemporary Urban Centre, curated by A-L Ponsin
        Radiations, CCA, Glasgow, curated by Rallou Panagiotou
        666, Wannajob, Athens, Curated by Thodoris Colovos

2006 Recent Graduates’ Exhibition, The Affordable Art Fair, curated by
         Susan Oman Terror, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco
        Slade Degree Show, London
        Contemporary Traditions, Mikrokosmos Cinema (screening) /Hoxton Bar-Gallery
         Athens, curated by Chloe Vaitsos
        Land(e)scape, artbelowzero, The Westbourne Studios, curated by Sarbit Girn

2005 New work by Graduates Students, Slade School, curated by James Roberts
        Other voices, other rooms, Catania, Sicely, curated by Daphne Vitali & Aless.Riva
        ProTaseis, version IV: 935 m² ,curated by
         Xenia Kalpaktsoglou & Augustine Zenakos
        Rehearsals, Notos Theatre Company, curated by Alikistis Poulopoulou
        Five days of video art, Athens School of Fine Art, Athens
        Art Athina, Gazon Rouge Gallery, Athens

2004 The majorette-respective, 291 Gallery, London, curated by Darling Women
        Life with the Beasts, Vavel, Athens, curated by Christoforos Marinos

2003 20 Rooms 2003, Kappatos Gallery, Athens, curated by Maria Maragou

2002 Two thousand two, Athens School of Fine Art, curated by M. Babousis

2001 Between others, Athens School of Fine Art, curated by Manolis Babousis

PUBLICATIONS (selection)

2007 If Greek cinema was John Casavetes and ancient cultures were
         The Masters of the Universe, text by Teamstrut, Mother issue 1, Athens

2006 Minotaur and Goathead, Fashionline Magazine issue 1, London Minotaur
         and other myths of the new milenium, ?.G. issue 1, Cyprus

2005 ProTaseis, version IV: 935 m², Action Field Kodra 05 catalogue
        Guilty or Innocent? Text in Rehearsals IV, Dialogues II catalogue
        Non-tradition: draft for a Greek contemporary art exhibition, text by
         Christoforos Marinos in Elpida’s Karaba Issues of curating, 9+1 un-realized  
         curatorial projectsGAP file # 1, Futura Publications, Athens

2004 Playing the roles of the sculptures, text by Maria Maragou in 11th International
        Month of Photography catalogue, Athens
        Face of the city: Antonakis Christodoulou, interview by Stathis Panagoulis,
         Time Out Athens, issue 81
        Looking for Talents, text by Vassilis Doupas, Time Out Athens, issue 63

2003 A smile in Electra, text by Maria Maragou in 20 Rooms 2003 catalogue, Athens

EDUCATION

2006 Master of Fine Art in Fine Art Media, The Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK

2004 Bachelor in Painting, Athens School of Fine Art, Greece

Antonakis cv:
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DEPORTING THE MYTHS

Deportation to me is when someone abandons an ordinary life either mentally or by force,” K.V. said when I talked to him about the images that were created in my mind every time I listened to his musical piece under the same title. I imagined human figures hovering over the ground, in a city where a war had just ended. These men, perhaps dead, perhaps alive, could be easily transported wherever they wanted. I was among them. I didn’t want to go somewhere in particular, I wanted to pass from all the places I loved since I could. Then, I met this Centaur outside Selfridges. It could be a scene from a David Lynch film, he wore a sweater from Gap and he was Japanese.
The Centaurs, according to Greek mythology chose to be exiled to Arcadia after they had been defeated in a battle. My Centaur is definitely their descendant. We don’t know where he was before or where he’s going next. We don’t even know if he really exists. If we decide that he does exist, we have to prove it too. The Greek mythological system gives a clear description and Photoshop does the rest. In the Postmodern age representation precedes and defines the real according to Baudrillard. The ancient Greeks needed to believe in the existence of myths they themselves had created. Today the mediation of software results in the depiction of these myths. My Centaur travels with me to London, mingles with the crowd in a city centre and someone can see him only when he really wants to believe in his existence.
He seems to be perfectly integrated in his new environment, as if he was there forever. He could have been there forever without anyone having noticed him. What is different is not always visible and everyone perceives it differently. Besides, who defines what is normal and what is usual? What is representation and what reality? Perhaps the whole world which we inhabit is the representation of another. Carrey represents with engravings the Parthenon’s pediments. Nobody can really know what they actually looked like, however there can be infinite ways to represent them.
If the only choice is representation, then this is also the only truth. We have the privilege of multiple versions but also the danger of exaggeration.
A Centaur walked along Oxford Street, met a Siren in Trafalgar Square and then took the tube. At Holborn station he saw the Minotaur going up the escalators. When the night fell, he found himself in Soho, along with Pan meandering among tourists.

THE REPETITION OF A MYTH

It is past midnight. Famous heart surgeon Alexis Fahrenheit’s car crosses the empty avenue at break-neck speed. He is visibly drunk, most likely upset. All the ghosts of his past are there, with him. From what is he trying to escape? Is he feeling guilty? Is he guilty? Do Erinyes hunt down innocents?”
The above extract is from the text I wrote for “Guilty or Innocent?”, a video based on the familiar movie scene where the leading actor will find himself in the awkward situation of reliving fragments of his story in the form of visions projected on the windscreen of his vehicle. The car crash is always inevitable at the high point of such a dramas.
How many times can a woman run out flustered in the street? For how many different reasons? How many times can such a situation be recorded? In how many ways? I was wondering this while I watched the actress Zoe Lascari (in one of these scenes) in a movie she has filmed with the director Yiannis Dalianidis in the 50’s – 60’s, the so-called golden period of the Greek cinema (a copy on a small scale of Hollywood’s mythological system but with it’s own symbols, characters, roles and dramas).
It is the same actress every time, the same director, the same speech and definitely the same way. Is it an illusion? No, it happened, it is happening and it will be happening again and again. These scenes can be used for infinite stories. We may encounter them in the films of Hitchcock or Antonioni, always with small variations depending on everyone’s style; they are part of world cinema’s language, isolated and vague with regard to the scenario. So, the origin of my references is of no importance. The response will never be the same and therefore I will collect many different answers depending on every spectator’s references and memories.
The truth, which someone finds in a myth, is absolutely personal. There is no single “true” version of which all the others are but copies or distortions. Every version belongs to the myth. My heroine in “Betrayal” is in pain, she is desperate, she runs into the night and she doesn’t know where to go. She may have been betrayed, she may have betrayed, she may just be exaggerating.
Jean- Pierre Vernant says that mythological narration hasn’t been entrenched into a definitive form. It always disposes variations, multiple versions which the narrator has at his disposal. He chooses one among them depending on the circumstances, the audience or his tastes, he can cut them off, augment them or change them as he pleases. In my case, I am asking the viewer to decide.
Some claim that human societies merely express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings common to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate or revenge, or that they try to provide some kind of explanations for phenomena which they cannot otherwise understand (astronomical, meteorological).
On the other hand psychoanalysts and many anthropologists have shifted the problems away from the natural or cosmological towards sociological and psychological fields. Cinema and television’s (e.g. soap operas) contemporary myths depend on and comment on all of the above. Directors with obsessions, clichéd scenes and every story can be told in countless ways. Besides, what gives the myth an operational value is that the specific pattern described is timeless, it explains the present and the past as well as the future.
The same girl (in “Betrayal”) will perform my Electra and one of the three visions in “Guilty or Innocent?”. Is there a relation? Could all these films in addition to the same references that connect them, be part of the same story? My story? Claude Levi-Strauss says that myth is language: to be known, must to be told. I want to speak about my myths-obsessions and be myself a part of a circle. The circle, what a shape! Never ends, never begins. It is so tiring and corrupting, it can become frightening. All this is exciting. In the past there have been thousands of Antonakis and in the future there will exist as many again, and every one of them will have a story to tell, which will not refer to the ones that have preceded it. A relay race of repetition then. Imagine a never ending circle!