Urban Totem

VOID 01

VOID is lovely. It’s a publishing space in the centre of Athens in the Exarcheia area that intrigues you as you pass it by. A big silver object made of iron sheet, like an urban totem dedicated to some yet to be named deity, stands in its interior ιn peace and certitude. Together with the light blue, elongated, neon letters of the space’s sign, they invite gaze and body to step inside. At first, you notice it behind the typical loggias of the city and realise its symmetrical aspects. After passing the columns you encounter its chiseled appearance in front of the display window, like a rock gouged on all sides to shelter all the functions necessary for the space’s everyday rituals. Shelves, display cases for the meticulously published material, the printer and the storage spaces along with the stairs leading to the basement, have all fitted in the grooves and protrusions of the galvanised volume and in the space left in between with the neutral, white walls of the store. 

VOID 02

VOID 03

Initially, it doesn’t make much sense. Then, you enter inside and it does. One is informed that in the centre of the space there used to be -and still are- two holes connecting you to the lower floor. Thus, the object within the object plays its functional role around these openings, without ending up wasting valuable space. On the contrary, it artfully and intuitively makes good use of the void that is left. Moving around -even if restrictedly- is pleasant and perusing the publications in front of an intense blue is a comfortable experience. The publishing work done by the owners at the back of the store, as they stated to me themselves, is done equally pleasantly, offering the privacy that is necessary to focus on working but also the extroversion required for a commercial space. The raw materials, storage spaces and the rest of the mechanisms that preserve the life of the store are all in their place behind the silver totem and there is no lack of them.

VOID 04

VOID 05

VOID 06

The blue I encountered in display cases inside, was also encountered almost unimpaired on the sign of the supermarket across the street, like an introduction of the city within the work but the work’s creators, Ioanna Vlachaki and Konstantinos Zves -whom I haven’t referenced all this time-, assured me that it was a happy accident that occurred within the subconscious images they possess and place in each work that they are concerned with. The joints of the unprocessed iron sheet, the grooves, the carvings and the different corners, small and big ones, that it creates all seem to be happy accidents that click with the place and happen effortlessly like the choreography of the midrange shot of Kevin Durant of the Brooklyn Nets, and I can’t wait to see it again.

VOID 07

VOID 08

I cannot describe this work with impressive philosophical quotes. It can not evoke many four syllable words but it has a lot of presence. The imposing yet airy volume of sheet iron possesses a corporeality that is sensed and felt. The metamorphosis of this cheap material is measured and adequately sensual. The plain media -spatial and material- have created an interesting fragment that shines hazily and allows for its interior world to create, project and share knowledge through the world of publishing. VOID is lovely.