Venue

KALFAYAN GALLERIES | ATHENS

11 Haritos Street
106 75 Kolonaki
Athens 

Press Release

Link

Kalfayan Galleries (11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki, Athens) present the solo exhibition of Antonis Donef titled ‘Symbols Of Selflessness’. The opening will take place on Thursday, 9 November 2023, 19.00-22.00.
In his calligraphic drawings and elaborated collages on canvas Antonis Donef captures a new, diverse and colorful personal view of Knowledge.
Antonis Donef’s interest in exploring the boundaries of knowledge, but also of theories on learning, is mirrored also in the new series of wall works: intricate multilayered collages comprised by cut-outs from vintage maps which the artist is collecting during his travels in Greece and abroad. The time-consuming and at the same time organic process of cutting each map into numerous strips and pasting them onto canvas by creating overlapping layers that form geometric patterns, captures the artist’s objective to recompose knowledge. The deconstruction and reassembling of extracts from different maps create new maps, in which the official borders are interweaved and ultimately canceled. These geographical palimpsests illustrate the current geopolitical turmoil around the world. Furthermore they redefine and reinterpret the already mapped knowledge while questioning polarizing and inflexible learning strategies which are indifferent towards the uniqueness of dissimilarity.

Antonis Donef

Antonis Donef was born in 1978. He lives and works in Athens. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and the University of Fine Arts in Madrid. His work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Greece and abroad, such as “Anaparastasi: Reconstruction, Reenactment, Reconstitution”, International Film Festival of Thessaloniki; AMETRIA (Curated by: Nicoletta De Rosa, Alessandro Pasini, Tomaso Piantini, Polina Kosmadaki, Yorgos Tzirtzilakis), Organised by DESTE | ‘Now and Then’, European Central Bank, Frankfurt |‘Hell As Pavilion’ (curated by Nadia Argyropoulou), Palais de Tokyo, Paris et al. In 2005 he was one of the six graduates of the School of Fine Arts to receive an award in the framework of the “A Great Moment for Culture: The Presentation of New Creators – Eurobank Private Banking”. In 2010 he was honored with the Art House Shanghai Award, Ailing Foundation (ArteFiera Bologna, Kalfayan Galleries), accompanied with an artist residency in Shanghai. In the same year he was a finalist for the “AUDI Award” for his solo exhibition in ‘New Positions’ section as part of the Kalfayan Galleries’ participation at Art Cologne. Works by Antonis Donef are in distinguished collections in Greece and abroad. Antonis Donef’s work is included in the show titled ‘Parallel Viewing. Works from the Collection of the Bank of Greece’ (curator: Charis Kanellopoulou) at the B&M Theocharakis Foundation (until 21/01/2024).