The exhibition already turned into an institution, fresh and restless, which embraced the innovation and decided to expose the works of the young Greek designers. The Design walk is held for the forth time and won itself a good name among the spoiled by the variety of art events residents of the Greek capital. The otherwise exhausted central neighborhood Psiry is changing its image. The ugly old buildings, former factories and warehouses are opening their doors this weekend to show that behind the dark walls there are studios of artists, where the seekers of new ideas in the fashion industry, interior design, decoration and graphic design are very welcome.
Curators of the exhibition this year are Melita Skamnaki and Wilhelm Finger from the London group Double-decker, who have been working together for three years now. In this year’s issue of their project Design walk will take part 13 studios who have chosen on their own the topics which they will work on for the visitors, however they are all subject to the idea for the contradiction of thesis and antithesis. According to the curators the neighborhood Psiry itself is full of such contradictions.
For example the Bios studio has chosen the contradiction between full and empty. It was the idea of the curators to invite cultural editors of big magazines, to come in Athens with an empty vision of the work of its designers and to talk a walk around Psiry in order to see the studios and have a lunch in the fancy restaurants in the neighborhood, have a drink in its crowded bars, make pictures and in this way to “fill up” their vision and share it with the hosts after the end of the exhibition. In the project will take part the magazines “Dazed and Confused” from Great Britain, “Novum” from Germany, “ID Pure” from Switzerland, the French magazine “Etapes” and the Greek “+design”.
Other ideas. Studio 3 in a Box is working on the contradiction between the thin letters and the bold letters. Are we thin or bold? Do we all have bipolar nature? Do we know the thin and the bold part of our own ego and the nature around us? Studio G on the other hand has chosen to study the contradiction between the beauty and ugliness and to analyze the nature of the visual communication. How do we define what is ugly and what is beautiful? To what extend the age of the governing fashion trends shape our criteria for beauty and ugliness? Is it possible to crate something ugly, which we like?
The Design Shop is collecting installations, pictures, illustrations and video of a group of international artists which are to provoke the visitors to think about the contradiction between the order and the chaos. The order and the chaos exist together. The presence of order does not exclude the presence of the chaos as well – they could very well balance each other. Sereal Designers attracts the attention by contradicting the interesting to the boring. The possibility of a human to accept and define its culture, education, environment and historical moment when his personality is being formed. That is why every one of us is unique. This is where the designers start from in order to lead us in their search of the limit between the things which inspire us and attract us and those which bore us.
During the exhibition in the weekend several interesting documentary movies could be seen in Taf – The Art Foundaiton, very close by the subway station at Monastiraki. The choice of GRReporter undoubtedly is Beautiful Losers (2008) – an amazing story for the birth of the street art, which follows the personally stories of a group of outsiders, which become leaders in varies types of art – skate, surf, punk, hip hop, graffiti. True to the DIY philosophy – do-it-yourself they find a common home in a small New York gallery. Undoubtedly the documentary Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight attracts the attention not just because of its world premier is this weekend in Athens. For the enlightened Milton Glaser is the face of the American graphic design, and the wide public knows him from the magazine New York Magazine, which he establishes and from the I Love NY campaign. The movie shows a wide aspect of his artwork – trademarks, company symbols, sketches, posters, drawings of one of the greatest graphic designers of our time.
For more information you could visit www.designwalk.gr
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