“Shadows: 4 young artists illuminate the cinematic world of John Cassavetes

A tribute to the great director of Greek origin, John Cassavetes

The Hellenic American Union presents the exhibition “Shadows” as a tribute to the great director of Greek origin, John Cassavetes, within the framework of the 37th European Film Panorama.

Four young artists, Alexandros Vergis, Katerina Christopoulou, Vassilis Paphilis and Virginia Axiotis, illuminate with their works a world of shadows, the cinematic world of John Cassavetes, curated by the great painter Yannis Psychopedis.

The exhibition opens on Monday, October 21, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hatzikyriakos-Gikas Gallery of the Hellenic American Union (22 Massalias Street, Athens) and will run until November 9, 2024.

The film “Shadows” (1959) by John Cassavetes becomes an object and a field of encounter between painting and cinema. The exhibition creates a fruitful dialogue between the black and white cinematic atmosphere of the late 1950s and the vibrant, colorful imagery of a new era, the present.

As John Psychopedis notes: “Cassavetes, the radical, pioneering filmmaker with the simple, improvisational, anthropocentric film form, provides with his film the raw material and the reasons for transforming his “Shadows” into a painterly feast of colors, forms, techniques, and special materials. The fluid black and white images, improvised rhythms, expressive freedom, interpersonal conflicts and emotional tensions of the film are translated here by the four creators with a visual vocabulary full of color impulses, unpredictable material functions, free painterly improvisations and a vivid, plastic feeling“.

As part of the exhibition and shortly before its closing, on Friday, November 8 at 7:00 p.m., John Cassavetes’ film “Shadows” will be screened at the Hellenic American Union Theatre with free admission.

The participating artists are Alexandros Vergis, Katerina Christopoulou, Vassilis Paphilis, Virginia Axiotis.