Live like this

After six years of continuous presence in visual events, with important exhibitions of Greek and foreign artists and with only one exhibition in the last two years of mandatory distancing and cultural deprivation, Macart Cultural Space reopened its doors on April 16 to the art-loving public. This time with the digital collage exhibition “Live Like This” by Yiannis Roussakis. We met Yiannis by chance, when returning to Greece after many years, he was looking for partners who would be able to transfer the digital collages he was creating to canvases. His surrealist world, a world of contrasts recorded with technical perfection through a seemingly anarchic graphic approach, impressed me. Post-war heroes of a war that never ended, find themselves dazed and bewildered in the face of an uncertain and threatening future, wandering among the wastelands of overconsumption and the ashes of promises of guaranteed prosperity, security and rapid social progress. Through his work, Yiannis does not wish to give directions for a future full of unprecedented social and existential challenges. Straddling between comedy and tragedy, sometimes with strong doses of self-sarcasm, he comments on everyday life moments from the 21st century. In a world of self-referentiality and digital complacency, full of self-aggrandizing virtual personas in complete ignorance of danger, cynicism and mental isolation, are normalized in mass culture. The need for more self-awareness, real communication and empathy becomes imperative. We quote an excerpt from the text of Nikos Vatopoulos in the catalog of the exhibition “…The collage series “Live Like This” by Yiannis Roussakis is a hymn to imagination and beauty as much as it is a preacher of awakening against vanity and cynicism. From his images I keep their emotional and aesthetic universe like a talisman. The symbolism of his images survives beyond the time of viewing, it is a reception that is as exhilarating as it is disturbing. This is a gospel of the times. An allegory that unfolds like an endless mural.” The collector’s catalog was printed in 350 numbered copies and distributed free of charge to visitors during the exhibition.