Dafni Barbageorgopoulou « ZZOT »

<strong>Dafni</strong> <strong>Barbageorgopoulou</strong>’s Art In every larger railway station there is a shop with “International Press”. However, which newspapers are international? The Englishlanguage ones? Many people living in Berlin are not able to read the popular Berlin Der Tagesspiegel. The numerous international artists who are in town for a scholarship or who have settled here often speak no German at all, or very little, even after years of living here. This is due to the lack of opportunity to practice. There are usually so many people at larger events in Berlin who do not understand German that one tends to automatically speak English. Those who have a newspaper in front of them but are not able to decipher the text still read it as an “image”: as a more or less abstract ensemble of headlines, text blocks, pictures, and graphic elements. Those who are not familiar with semaphore in the international maritime signal flag system will admire the colourful, diverse colours and geometric patterns as a purely aesthetic phenomenon, without knowing what messages are being exchanged. The signal system equivalent of the sequence of letters “<strong>ZZOT</strong>”, for example, means more or less “Attention! Watch out!”, a message that newspaper headlines also seek to convey. In the series <strong>ZZOT</strong> from 2012, <strong>Dafni</strong> <strong>Barbageorgopoulou</strong> employs the exposed metal printing plates used to print the pages of the <strong>ZZOT</strong> series, 2012, maritime signal flag system, aluminium newspaper offset plates, 110 x 320 cm Tagesspiegel. The plates have been cut or mounted over one another and turned into wall reliefs. The geometric shapes are based on the semaphore motif “<strong>ZZOT</strong>”. There are also variations in which single plates have been leant aslant on a newspaper stand. The artist simultaneously superimposes two information systems that quasi interfere and intersect with one another. <strong>Dafni</strong> <strong>Barbageorgopoulou</strong> has always been interested in abstract patterns and ornaments. However she does not follow the trend towards “new abstraction” 1 and she is not a “formalist”, 2 like many contemporary artists who simply recompose the vocabulary of figurative Modernism. The formal elements incorporated into her works that fill entire walls, spraypainted on rolls of bast weave, hand-stitched, or folded as floor sculptures comprised of two-dimensional shapes, originate from very different contexts. The large installation Bright Pointed Arch from 2010 is characteristic of the artist’s approach. Structures such as Gothic church windows, floor plans of skyscrapers in Singapore, patterns for items of clothing, and plans for models of spaceships provide the source for the formal vocabulary, which has been incorporated into a floor assembly made up of wooden elements. The installation also includes a roll of bast weave mounted on the wall, hand-stitched for the most part with red and white rhombuses. The way they are presented is reminiscent of fabric sold by the metre and the pattern evokes the ornamental elements in Indian clothing. To us, the diverse range of forms with which cultures unfamiliar to us decorate their clothes and objects are equally as “abstract” as the construction plans for airplanes or spaceships are for laypeople. Abstract does not describe something non-figurative but everything whose meaning we don’t understand. In our globalized world too, there is scarcely anything that is as universally readable as the pictogrammes in international airports. How do we read a newspaper in a language we are not familiar with? How do we deal with visual forms that we encounter every where where we are not “at home”, and which have their specific meaning, their practical value in these places, which we perceive, however, without any knowledge of the “context”? <strong>Dafni</strong> <strong>Barbageorgopoulou</strong>’s art brings together “abstract” shapes and patterns, which she takes from the different contexts, in spatial and also physically experienceable ensembles. Instead of specifying the original meanings as “references”, the forms and symbols used are linked together in a hybrid way and are subsequently given the potential for new codification. In this way, <strong>Barbageorgopoulou</strong>’s art can be compared to the approach described by Claude Levi-Strauss as “bricolage”, or the reorganisation of symbols and events to form new structures. <strong>Dafni</strong> <strong>Barbageorgopoulou</strong> belongs to the group of contemporary artists who have made it their task to piece together our world, which is becoming increasingly more complex at least on a formal level, quasi in the form of a radically reduced model. Her installations are like spaceships of the mind and it is certainly no coincidence that they are inspired by models of spaceships that can be assembled at home. 1 Sven Drühl (ed.), Neue Abstraktion, Special topic in Kunstforum International, issue 206/2010. 2 Formalismus. Moderne Kunst, heute, Exh. cat. Kunstverein in Hamburg 2004. 4 5