⁰¹⁻⁰³ PhotoBiennale 2023. Views of the exhibition Syzygy, MOMus Alex Mylona. Photos: Afroditi Choulaki.
⁰⁴⁻⁰⁶ PhotoBiennale 2023. Views of the exhibition Syzygy, MOMus Alex Mylona. Photos: ANO Atelier.
⁰⁷ Ilias Sipsas, Familia Santa, 2020, triptych, film décollage, UV print on aluminum, 160 × 230 cm
⁰⁸ Apollon Glykas, Freeze, 2023, blades, darkroom print, acrylic glass, aluminum frame, 60 × 50 cm

One of the Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2023 exhibitions, with a clearly differentiated perspective on photography, is Syzygy by Apollon Glykas and Ilias Sipsas. The show mainly concerns an ingenious artistic ‘marriage’ of integrated media based on photography, movement, light and sculpture. The exhibition attempts to bypass the barriers of art history; from the photographic documentation to the mixed use of photography and visual constructions, from the modern to the post-modern perception of the artwork and its role, and from the unremitting cycles of interpretative ruptures in art history up to the present, one thing is certain: the prospects of a work of art are not limited to expressive mediums, the mediums do not isolate artistic perspectives - and no interpretation (be it intelligible or not) is ever absolute.

On the occasion of this exhibition, three questions were posed to the two artists, attempting to focus on the structural elements of both their artistic work and their collaboration.


Areti Leopoulou: The circumstances of this ‘marriage’: On what occasion did the two of you find yourselves in this synergy? Tell us a few words about the history of your partnership.

We have known each other since the beginning of our artistic career, since Gregory Kolizera’s tutorial twenty years ago. We crossed paths at the ASFA in different art workshops, one at George Lappas’ and the other at Dimitris Sakellion’s. Both art workshops were very open in their way of expressing and managing materials and media, and their approach to the artwork was enlightening for each of us and for the contact we maintained with each other.

While we do not create joint artworks but mainly joint projects, there is a comfort in understanding the circumstances and issues that each one of us faces in his work; maybe that has something to do with how these issues converse and get on track. This exhibition is a continuation of the exhibition Syzygy — Spatial Cuts & Merging Orbits that we showed in June 2021 at Nykyaika Gallery, Tampere, Finland. The proposal came from the visual artist, curator and mutual friend Sebastian Boulter, who curated the exhibition together with Zoe Kalfa. The show there, in the midst of the pandemic, was a smaller body of work, but several of these works are also in our current PhB23 exhibition. This was an important collaboration in terms of the dialogue they can articulate for both us and the Nykyaika space, as they are a more photographic gallery and they are not used to these kinds of partnerships. Of course, indeed, beyond the management of the works, the images of the photographs in them come from Greece and this is somehow exotic for a country on the other side of Europe.

So on this first axis and after some reasonable time (not too short, so we haven’t done a review, but not too long to have moved elsewhere) with the encouragement of Yannis Bolis and the approval of Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale, we had the time and the opportunity to develop it further, adding more works in a well-worked and close-knit ensemble with a different production scale and a larger team.

AL: Faceless faces: why do you choose photographs of strangers? And where do you find the materials for your works?

The way this happens is different for both of us; our practices may have a common starting point, but our palette is differentiated both in terms of the materials and, more importantly, in terms of management.

AG: The selection of photos usually comes from a personal archive with a few exceptions, in which the faces are unknown; the rest are mainly images I‘ve taken at various occasions and recovered from prints I‘ve made in the past. These street and social event images are key protagonists in this special series. There is a temporal in-between process, which takes shape alongside their integration into the space, into some kind of construction. This way, one material finds the other; this often may be initiated by a random occasion, regardless of whether it will play any role afterwards.

My artworks’ materials are usually metal parts from telecommunication systems, connectors, construction components that have been previously standardized and reproduced for utilitarian purposes. Mostly monochromatic, with their materiality deliberately evident, all materials retain their original identities, but deliberately create sets anew.

IS: My material comes mainly from photographs of unknown people, from sold-off files I collect from Athens’ open-air markets/bazaars. These are mainly B/W negative films, anonymous portraits and other images of various persons and situations. A bank of random images in which I intervene independently, usually through the technique of collage and dècollage; this is a management that resembles more a process of de-documenting the material. By detaching the image from the faces and their expressions, thus turning the perceptual mechanism of the gaze towards a new event, unexpected, elliptical — yet, at the same time, familiar.

However, for both of us, the balance between our core choices and the final result has to be always open, since we consider it natural for our visual work to function as a conversation between the creator and the work, this is an inevitable part of it.

AL: Theory and practice: where does technique come forward and where does the conceptual aspect win, in the marriage of photography and sculpture? How do you manage such a dynamic in your works?

IS: Through the darkroom practices, which were a common starting point for each of us individually, we developed a common dialogue around issues that were strongly related to the structural characteristics of the photographic medium. The analogue body of the photograph, its chemical and optical component, presupposes a sequence of manipulations that make the photographic substance of depth more tangible; it activates a new relationship between photographic surface and sculptural space. The implications of such a search somehow redefine in our work, both the process and the final composition and its content.

AG: In the following sentence I think you articulate this process well: ‘The projects are based on a multifaceted concept of recomposition. They are structured by framing the photographic image with objets trouvés, with paradoxical and incongruous materials, which nevertheless construct their own new three-dimensional universe, holding together balances that are uncanny, unsettling, but also rigorously ordered’ (excerpt from the exhibition catalogue by A. Leopoulou). The balance between the combination of photography and sculpture is something I have been concerned with for some time. In practice I have attempted to bring two parallel bodies of work into the same context, utilising techniques that are more relevant to me and leave room for coexistence, conversation between them, with anxiety not overshadowing the other. Conceptually, I wanted to hold together the characteristics of these two worlds, so the photography sustains its two-dimensional nature and the sculpture is structured in an assemblage, remaining within the context of the meta-management of materials. in order to make evident the processing of a system that redefines its new environment, it is a kind of relocation. I understand this process to be quite related to the nature of photography; the borrowing of external forms to shape a new frame; the ready-made as a sculpture; two paths starting from a certain point, a point moving further down the production line.


Areti Leopoulou is an art historian, curator at the MOMus Museum of Contemporary Art.

The exhibition Syzygy. Solid Light & Timeless Motion by Apollon Glykas and Ilias Sipsas was held at the MOMus Museum Alex Mylona, curated by Yannis Bolis, in the frame of the Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2023, from 13 October 2023 to 7 January 2024.