The solo exhibition of Denny Theocharakis, featuring paintings and photographs, installations, and audiovisual media, centers around the old TEOKAR S.A. car assembly plant in Volos and is hosted at the "Hellenic Cosmos" Cultural Center.
The exhibition titled assembling memories opens on March 6, 2024, at 20:00 and will run until May 31, 2024.
2024, charcoal, colored charcoal, ink, pastel, 99 x 189 cm.
After successful participations in significant group exhibitions in London, Seoul, New York, and Miami, artist Denny Theocharakis returns to Athens to create a contemporary art project, a multimedia art experience, at the "Hellenic Cosmos" Cultural Center.
2019, charcoal on old assembly drawing applied on canvas, 98 x 200 cm.
Inspired by a significant part of Greek industrial history, the artist opens the gates of her mnemonic universe to the viewer, transforming their visit into a unique sensory experience.
In the multifaceted and multilayered visual sets she presents, her canvases become old assembly drawings (blueprints) used for car production at the iconic TEOKAR S.A. factory (1980-1995) of the Theocharakis family.
The factory was one of the most significant business investments in Greece's industrial development. 29 years after its closure, it has now become deserted.
2019, charcoal, collage on old assembly drawing applied on canvas, 90 x 154 cm.
The artist returns to the old family factory, remembering it bustling with life, and now faces decay, decline, and abandonment. She captures precious images of the dystopian, vandalized landscape with her camera, reverently collecting drawings, papers, fabrics, leathers, and anything else that could be preserved.
On these old materials, "Theocharakis unfolds various thematic aspects, sometimes with pen, sometimes with charcoal or vivid oil colors, depicting – with different techniques – unique and imaginative worlds that balance between realism and surrealism," notes Museologist Sophia E. Peloponnesiou-Vasilakou.
Visual artist, photographer, and architect Manolis Babousis points out that "while Theocharakis has her gaze fixed on the future and innovation, she never ceases to draw from the visible and invisible of memory and experience. She assembles everything into images, photographs, drawings, and paintings. Her photographs capture the uniqueness of the architecture, machinery, and objects of an era. Her lines become stone, rocks, trees, forests, castles, vertical cities, vertical, parallel, intersecting labyrinths".
2023, oil on old assembly drawing applied on canvas, 100 x 134 cm.
Each work by Denny Theocharakis is a text of identity, an act of communication of feelings, thoughts, concerns, awakening the viewer and encouraging an alternative view of reality.
As Art Historian Dr. Thodoris Koutsogiannis notes, the artist "stages her exhibition narrative with organic, almost deterministic objects from the factory, as ready-made fragments of memories, with the space functioning as a quasi-ark of the dynamic past. She attempts to preserve the individual and collective memory of TEOKAR's activities, breathe new life into it, artistically transformed, and commemorate/monumentalize it".
2020, ink on old assembly drawing applied on canvas, 74 x 100 cm.
Biography:
Visual artist DENNY THEOCHARAKIS loves to travel around the world and capture images of everyday life with her camera. Although each country has its own customs and traditions, on her journeys, she is constantly surprised by the similarities that run through seemingly different cultures.
Her travel experiences are transformed into art. Through the various stimuli and emotions she experiences by observing different aspects of global daily life, she shapes a new reality in her works, seemingly complex and labyrinthine. A reality which, as in real life, is full of distinct paths leading to different destinations.
Her artistic creation varies, refusing to identify with specific movements or techniques. Her style is uncompromising and adventurous, constantly seeking new ways of expression with different materials, textures, and techniques.
Denny Theocharakis has presented her works in both solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. One of her works has been selected to be part of the collection of the National Gallery-Museum Alexandros Soutsos.
She holds an MBA from NYU Stern Business School, is a graduate of the Department of Economics of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts.
