H A V E N
A R T S
 

In Mott Haven, the Bronx’s new arts neighborhood

 

ARISTIDES LOGOTHETIS
 “Hydra”
 

November 2 - 30, 2005
Opening reception Friday, November 4, 6 to 9
Open Noon-5, Mon-Sat
718-585-5753
info@havenarts.com

 

October 12, 2005 -- “Hydra,” an exhibition of sculpture and painting by Aristides Logothetis, will be on display at Haven Arts from November 2nd to 30th, 2005.  Colorful and bizarre fabric sculptures mock prevailing Anglo-bourgeois values and use the absurd to evoke questions about gender, class, and ethnicity.  Paintings layer “ready-made” internet images taken from Ancient Greek art and current pop culture with paint, inviting the viewer to consider multiple allegories revolving around ethnicity and sexuality, history, craft, and taste.

Logothetis’ latest sculpture, “Pentahydra,” ( 6’ x  4’ x 4’ ) is made of 5 pairs of stuffed Bermuda shorts, fashioned from patchwork plaid madras fabric, suspended from the center of the ceiling. Dozens of “tentacles” made of stuffed men’s ties cascade from buttonholes sewn into the shorts. Absurdly phallocentric, the sculpture is evocative and provocative.  Enclosed is an image of “MadeUsa,” a related work exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum this past summer.

Also enclosed is a detail image taken from the painting “Hydra-Dynamic,” (3’ x 3’). References to the many uses of the word “Hydra,” including the microscopic protozoan, the mythological creature, and the galactic constellation, push-and-pull the perceptions of the viewer.  In that vain, Logothetis evokes questions about the dynamics of gender and sexuality, employing mythological references from Ancient Greek art as well as the notorious protest image placed as an ad in a 1974 Artforum by artist Lynda Benglis, showing herself naked, holding a phallus.

“Never has the modern sculptural convention of the ‘disagreeable object’ looked so agreeable. There is a cheeky subversiveness which looks like an unlikely collaboration between Louise Bourgeois and Ellsworth Kelly,” says David Cohen of The New York Sun (12-18-03).
 
Mario Naves of The New York Observer (1-13-04) says, “Ms. Bourgeois has had an influence on Mr. Logothetis: You can see it in the reliance on secondhand fabrics, an emphasis on bodily discomfort, and the bathos that comes ready-made with each. What sets Mr. Logothetis apart is a disarming sense of the absurd and a certain forward momentum: This is an artist who employs anti-art means for pro-art ends. I see it as a sign of hope.”  
 
Born in Athens, Greece in 1967, Aristides Logothetis completed his BFA from Tufts University & the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  He went on to complete his MFA at the University of New Orleans in 2001.  He was Resident Artist at the Schloss Buchsenhausen in Innsbruck, Austria in 2001, in Fort George, Annotto Bay, Jamaica in 2002, and at Cue Art Foundation in NYC in 2003- 2004.

In 2005, Mr. Logothetis exhibited in the “Studio” show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, curated by Tony Oursler, in “Bronx Art Now” at The Bronx River Art Center, as well as in “Better Recognize” at the Longwood Gallery at Hostos Community College. He was also a 2005 Bronx Council on the Arts grant recipient.

Haven Arts is a dynamic art space that promotes and represents visual art, dance and performance, poetry and other forms of _expression in a vibrant format, in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx, New York’s most vibrant, new arts neighborhood.