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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14279/35866| Title: | COMBINED, International Group Exhibition, 2025, Old Electricity Board (Palia Ilektriki) in Paphos, curated by Vassiliki Vayenou and Stratis Pantazis, under the auspices of the Embassy of Austria in Cyprus and the support of the Municipality of Paphos, hosted by non-profit organization M.A.M.A (Making Art, Meeting Art) Contemporary | Authors: | Pericleous, Vicky | Major Field of Science: | Humanities | Field Category: | Arts | Keywords: | Arts;Contemporary Art Practices;International Art Exhibitions;Cosmopolitanism;Political & Social Narratives;Combinatorial Reasoning | Issue Date: | 18-Oct-2025 | Source: | Non-profit organization M.A.M.A (Making Art, Meeting Art) Contemporary, Paphos Municipality, auspices of the Embassy of Austria in Cyprus | Link: | https://www.philenews.com/events/combined-stin- pafo-diethnis-ikastiki-ekthesi-pou-parousiastike-se-ellada-ke-afstria/ | Conference: | COMBINED | Abstract: | The non-profit organization M.A.M.A (Making Art, Meeting Art) Contemporary is hosting the group exhibition COMBINED, which was presented with variations in Athens and then in Volkersdorf in Austria, at the Old Electricity Board (Palia Ilektriki) in Paphos, under the auspices of the Embassy of Austria in Cyprus and the support of the Municipality of Paphos. The exhibition derives its ideas and aims from the different meanings of the specific word, such as to add together, to come together, to unite in order to have an effect, while it activates every form of combinatorial reasoning, even that of a scheme. The implications of the word’s connotations are closely related, metaphorically and literally, to the worldwide political instability and crisis of the present years. In this light, the artworks of the participating artists expose the ways in which the financial and political crisis mechanisms divert our attention away from the devastating, irreversible effects of environmental destruction, as well as the operational modes of capitalism. In addition, multiculturalism, the systematic support of actions related to both visible and invisible divisions, intolerance, misinformation and the violation of human rights are examined. Curators: Vassiliki Vayenou and Stratis Pantazis Participating artists: Blanka Amezkua (Latinx/USA), Dimitris Georgakopoulos (Greece), Marco Goldenstein (Germany), Tamara Erde (Germany and France), Sula Zimmerberger (Austria), Collectif MASI (Madlen Anipsitaki & Simon Riedler, France and Greece), Elli Kontou (Cyprus and Greece), Marianna Constanti (Cyprus), Theodor Liho (Bulgaria), Claudia-Maria Luenig (German, based in Austria), Eleni Lyra (Greece), Cornelia Mittendorfer (Austria), Uwe Bressnik (Austria), Karen Ostrom (Canadian, based in the USA), Elena Panayotova (Bulgaria), Yiannis Pappas (Germany), Vicky Pericleous (Cyprus), Karin Maria Pfeifer (Austria), Andreas Savva (Cyprus and Greece), Makis Faros (Greece), Efi Fouriki (Greece), Yioula Hadjigeorgiou (Cyprus and Greece), Maria Hanl (Austria) Venue: Old Electricity Board (Palia Ilektriki), Vladimirou Herakleous 8, Paphos 8010 Opening: Saturday 18 October 2025, 18:30 Time: 17:30- 20:30 (everyday) Durarion: 18 – 25 October 2025 Contact information: M.A.M.A Contemporary 97843583/ 96582680 The Screening of the films/ documentaries will be announced on Facebook: Percephone, the red carpet, by COLLECTIF MASI Moonlight Jerusalem, by Tamara Erde | Description: | Studies for a Place: Fountain/Shelter, III, 2025, Vicky Pericleous, ceramic, stones from Kalavassos’ riverside, Cypriot Palaeolithic & Neolithic stones and artefacts, semi-precious stones, fossils *’During the reign of King Chieh of the Hsia (ancient China), a record says: “Fei Chang saw two suns, one rising in brilliant light from the east, the other sinking with fading light in the west’*, Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian (translated by Burton Watson), 1993 Studies for a Place: Shelter/Fountain, III (2025) unfolds across the floor as a low-lying constellation of stones, fragments, conduits and image, in a taxonomy that seems to be settling into the exhibition space—leaning, pooling, accumulating—rather than asserting itself as an object placed within space. What emerges is neither sculpture nor architecture, but a provisional terrain: a site within a site. The stones, gathered from the Kalavassos riverside are interwoven with Cypriot Paleolithic and Neolithic stones and archaeological artefacts, with fossils, architectural structures and ceramic fragments, all in an entangled taxonomy of sites, temporalities, and material conditions that exceed linear historicity or narrative. These particles or fragments, made or found, become active agents and carriers of deep, embodied time. Their surfaces—eroded, porous, fractured—speak of prolonged contact with water, pressure, and movement. These are not neutral materials but witnesses to geological, human and non-human becomings, arranged in a manner that refuses archaeological display as well as any attempt of producing definite narratives. Instead, all fragments of the installation, form a loose grammar of proximity: clusters, gaps, lines, and pauses. At the centre and edges of the installation, white ceramic elements/sculptures extend outward like ribs, roots, or conduits. Their glossy, fragile surfaces contrast with the density and weight of stone, suggesting channels for flow rather than structural support. These ceramic forms evoke fountains, skeletal remains, or irrigation systems—simultaneously organic and constructed. They do not deliver water, yet they insist on its absence, marking the installation as a dry fountain: a structure defined by circulation without substance, by potential rather than function. The presence of a truncated stone column introduces a quiet architectural echo of classical order rendered obsolete and fragmented. Detached from vertical authority, it becomes a remnant among remnants, stripped of hierarchy. Nearby, carved stone-forms resembling limbs or torsos collapse figuration into erosion, blurring the distinction between human, or non-human-made and naturally shaped matter. The work repeatedly unsettles classification: artefact becomes stone; stone becomes body; body becomes ruin, ruin becomes anew, a model for another Topos. Projected onto the wall above the stones, a blue, luminous image—suggestive from afar water or sky, and in a close view, a distant-western- architecture from elsewhere, introduces a second horizon. This projected “elsewhere” does not extend the space but fractures it, inserting a virtual depth that contrasts with the dense materiality on the floor. The projected archival image introduces a second place into the installation—one whose origin remains uncertain, unanchored to a known geography or historical narrative. Suggestive of a European square organized around a fountain, the image carries with it the visual language of urban order, civic space, and architectural symmetry. Yet its authority is immediately destabilized. Removed from its original context, re-photographed in a layered composition with the familiar Cypriot landscape and sky of Pericleous, the image no longer functions as document or reference. It becomes a site in suspension. The projected image emits a different atmosphere—cool, distant, reflective—while absorbing traces of another sky, another horizon. In this act of re-photography, place ceases to be singular. It becomes composite, relational, and unstable. Light operates here as a spatial agent. The projection acts like a second sun: immaterial, untouchable, temporally unstable. Its cool glow spills onto stones and ceramics, producing reflections that momentarily animate the inert matter below. A living plant, positioned at the edge of the installation, further complicates temporal boundaries. It introduces ongoing growth into a field dominated by deep time and arrested motion. The plant stands as a quiet mediator between human care and nonhuman agency, reinforcing the work’s refusal to separate natural from constructed, living from fossilized, human from non-human entities. The title Shelter/Fountain names a dual condition that the installation never resolves. Shelter implies enclosure, protection, and rest; fountain implies offering, flow, and exposure. Here, shelter is porous, open to erosion; the fountain is dry, displaced into memory and gesture. Together, they articulate a liminal space—one that shelters both, uncertainties and possibilities. Time in ‘Studies for a Place: Fountain/Shelter, III’, 2025, does not progress forward but overlaps, or doubles back on itself, as do the entanglement of materialities and all active agents in the work. Time does not move forward but folds. Emergence and disappearance are therefore, simultaneous. The work holds and exposes these contradictions in a terrain where non-human duration exceeds human intention. The work opens onto other trajectories of alteration, where notions of place, and in particular its reference of the condition of Cyprus, appears not as a singular island identity but as relational, within an extended archipelagic condition; where histories reverberate laterally rather than hierarchically. The installation materializes this condition through dispersed accumulation rather than enclosure. Stones are not assembled into walls or bounded forms; they remain porous, allowing space to circulate between them. Ceramic conduits extend outward without resolving into function, suggesting flows that traverse rather than terminate. The work’s architecture is therefore centrifugal, not centripetal—it disperses meaning rather than containing it. The work stages a present that is thick with memory, erosion, and possibility. It poses questions and discusses not where we are, but how we remain—amid materials that outlast us, structures that fail us, and flows that continue without us. Ultimately, Studies for a Place: Shelter/Fountain, III does not ask where one belongs within global structures of power and hierarchy, but how those structures might be undone. By foregrounding multiplicity, dispersion, and relationality, the installation proposes an alternative spatial conditioning—one grounded not in territory, but in connection; not in identity, but in becoming. Place emerges not as a container, but as an open constellation, perpetually reconfigured through material, memory, connectivity, care and movement. | URI: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14279/35866 | Rights: | @vickypericleous @M.A.M.AContemporary @vassilikivayenou @stratispantazis | Type: | Exhibitions | Affiliation : | Cyprus University of Technology non-profit organization M.A.M.A (Making Art, Meeting Art) Contemporary Municipality of Paphos Austrian Embassy in Cyprus |
Funding: | Under the auspices of the Embassy of Austria in Cyprus and the support of the Municipality of Paphos, hosted by the non-profit organization M.A.M.A (Making Art, Meeting Art) Contemporary | Publication Type: | Selected Artwork | Participation: | Exhibition hosted by public organizations |
| Appears in Collections: | Art and Design |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| COMBINED_ΠΑΦΟΣ_PRESS_ENGLISH.pdf | 154.74 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open | |
| COMBINED_ΠΑΦΟΣ_PRESS_ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟ.pdf | 335.06 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open | |
| COMBINED_POSTER.png | 1.19 MB | image/png | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 01, VP.jpg | 2.56 MB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 02, VP.JPG | 3.94 MB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 03, VP.JPG | 4.52 MB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 04, VP.JPG | 3.63 MB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 06, VP.JPG | 4.34 MB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 07, VP.JPG | 470.75 kB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 10, VP.jpg | 1.07 MB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 15, VP.jpg | 1.32 MB | JPEG | View/Open | |
| Studies for a Place, Fountain Shelter, III, 2025, 11, VP.JPG | 364.95 kB | JPEG | View/Open |
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