DESIGN WORKS | ALEKOS FASSIANOS

設計作品 | 阿萊科斯·法西亞諾斯

Carwan Gallery,雅典 | 2023年9月21日至11月11日

Alekos Fassianos 遺產管理委員會與 Carwan Gallery 共同呈獻這位已故藝術家設計作品的首次回顧展。

這場將於 11 月 24 日開幕的展覽,與 Alekos Fassianos 遺產管理委員會合作,首次展出這位已故藝術家畢生創作的一系列功能性物件;這些作品隨後將製作成限量且附有認證的複製品。

來自近東地區、全球首間收藏級設計藝廊 Carwan Gallery 榮幸宣佈,將代理著名希臘畫家 Alekos Fassianos(1935-2022)的部分設計作品。這項與 Alekos Fassianos 遺產管理委員會合作的全新文化企劃,將以一場首次舉辦的回顧展揭開序幕,專注呈現這位藝術家較少為人知的一面,即其功能性設計物件。

Born in Athens during the interwar period, Fassianos studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, before moving to Paris in 1960 with a scholarship by the French Government, to study lithography at the E?Cole des Beaux-Arts. During his Paris years he met and became friends with eminent personalities of the French avant-grade, such as Louis Aragon and Jean-Marie Drot. In the following decades, he remained based between Paris and Athens, continuously expanding his artistic practice in a tireless exploration of materials, media, and techniques. Fassianos’s spectacularly diverse oeuvre includes painting in every scale, sculpture for private and public spaces, illustration, scenography, the applied arts, and writing.

While he befriended the Surrealists in Paris, Fassianos did not follow the European avant-garde of the 1960s, focusing instead on developing his own creative vocabulary — one imbued with Mediterranean light and the simplicity of Greek classical and folk art. Over the years, he created a beguiling vocabulary of humane, uplifting iconography that is unmistakably his own and quintessentially Hellenic. He even designed the spaces he lived in following a salon approach, where every detail serves to create a harmonious whole.

The artist’s passion for furniture-making — originating in his childhood, when he used to make his own toys — became part of this life-long practice. In the spaces he created, everything from the pigment in the wall plaster to the curtain rods was meticulously thought out and often made by the artist himself, who loved working in brass, marble, and wood as much as with brushes and engraving. Thus, a whole Fassianesque universe was born, where the artist’s signature bicycle riders, lovers, smokers, and cupids live amongst fluttering birds, bees, flowers, and plants.

The design language of Alekos Fassianos is characterised by simplicity and an imaginative, elevating mood, with his furniture reflecting his wider philosophy about human life: the artist believed that we should never rest on our laurels, and always seize the day to make the most of the life ahead of us. All his furniture is therefore designed for practicality rather than comfort and with the idea to keep its users actively engaged in body and spirit. At the same time, they are designed with a deep love for the human body, with smooth, rounded edges and using natural leather and materials that are friendly to the skin. Each object was designed by hand to be unique, reflecting Fassianos’s resentment for all mass- produced things.

Made by the artist himself in collaboration with master artisans, the more than 100 incredible objects that he created for his family reflect the artist’s passion for beauty and detail. The exhibition presents a selection of seating, tables, lighting, painted ceramics, and other functional objects as museum artefacts, which will be reproduced for the first time in 2023. Carwan Gallery will replicate new, small editions of most of Fassianos’s design works, with the certification and collaboration of the Alekos Fassianos Estate — following the drawings and prototypes from the artist’s archive.