Poros Island is not a cosmopolitan base for major art dealers, and it does not have as many artists from all over the world as other islands in its “neighborhood”.

But over the years it has acquired a visual tradition that puts it in the path of art lovers, creating a microclimate that also strengthens the art market.

That’s what I’m thinking as I wait for Citronne Gallery Director Tatiana Spinaris to wrap up the tour of businessman and contemporary art collector Dakis Ioannou, who came with his company to see the new exhibition two days after the opening. Citronne began operations on Poros in 2006, and his continued presence on the island, as well as his contribution to the “opening” of the archaeological museum to the fine arts – this year marks the tenth anniversary of the museum’s exhibitions – have created an interesting fortune that is in keeping with the distinctive character of the place .

This year’s Citronne exhibition is called “Repetitions”. Eleven visual artists are participating – Nikos Alexiou, Bepe Caturelli, Alekos Chiarinis, Cristina Mithrenze, Mirto Xanthopoulou, Maria Economopoulou, Nina Papakonstantinou, Nikos Podias, Efi Spirou, Thalia Chioti, Panos Charalambous – who discuss the common element of repetition in their work. From Mithrenze’s “Akrokerama” paper, a series of handmade sculptural paperworks of folded and repurposed embroidery magazines and book covers, to Panos Charalambous’ video installation documenting the routine of taming a magpie, and from Nikos Alexiou’s personal execution of decorations from the Ibir monastery floor patterns to creative approaches to writing and deciphering the text of three artists – Spirou, Chiotis, Xanthopoulou – the ritual routine of visual artists gave rise to works with a hypnotic inner rhythm.

By frequent references to the manual tradition, the artists, as it were, reveal to the viewer some of the secrets of creativity: the obsession and torment of a person who seeks to develop his expressive language. Repetition is sometimes a way of mental self-regulation – Podia’s work could be AI (artificial intelligence) creations if they were not meticulous creations of an artistic hand – and sometimes an attempt to dissolve the established perception of knowledge through the dislocation of speech. .

contract of life

Referring to the manual tradition, the artists reveal some of the secrets of creativity: the obsession and anxiety of a person trying to develop his expressive language.

The presentation of the work by Alekos Kirarinis somehow connects the exhibition of the gallery with the exhibition of the Archaeological Museum of Poros. Kyrarinis processes marble. Growing up on Tinos, he worked with his father, a marble sculptor, from a young age before joining ASKT. “Linear marble sculpture has influenced my work from a very young age. There is a sense of relief in my paintings,” he explains, “but in my sculptural endeavors one can also see my desire to express a new appreciation of the Christian and folk art of Tinos.”

Our discussion took place before I visited the periodical exhibition “On the Grave” organized in cooperation with the Citronne Gallery at the Poros Archaeological Museum. There, among the fragments of the distant past – tombstones, donations and vows – I find that the spirituality of this work, the bearer of which, however, is European modernism, really manages to clearly converse with ancient Greek and early Byzantine art. The works of the exhibition at the Archaeological Museum are overlapped with the famous images of tomb columns of antiquity. The central figure is depicted saying goodbye to familiar faces. At the same time, they serve as a monument to the subsequent death, a contract of life with an inevitable end.

If we need to make a remark, it does not refer to the work of Kirarinis or the importance of placing contemporary art in a public space, which the curator of the Piraeus and Islands Antiquities Department tries to conceptually associate with the exhibits. Such institutions renew the public of a small museum that was built over the course of two years, 1967-68, on a piece of land donated in 1941 by the family of Alexander Korysis, Prime Minister of Greece. the museum needs to be modernized with aesthetics as well as sensitivity to its heritage, because it has enough visitors and we want more of them.

“Replays”: until 27.07, “At the Grave”: until 30.09.