A group show combining some of New York City’s top artists of today comes to the island of the winds opening on July 29th.
It’s an interesting twist for the island, known more for its all-night parties and celebrity-spotting on fabled beaches. Art has never been “a thing” on Mykonos, but that is changing, thanks to Marina Vranopoulou’s Dio Horia, a new art space complete with a residency program that hopes to rival art scenes happening on islands like Hydra and Andros.
The group show is called “Greek Gotham” and brings together 16 New York City artists, all charged with the task of interpreting and portraying a single Greek word that they were each given, including “empathy,” “metaphor,” “democracy,” “iconography” and “lyricism.”
The show aims to draw parallels between the Ancient and Classical Greek Civilization and New York City as it is today, according to its organizers.
The is curated by New York City art consultant Maria Brito and features works— some created especially for “Greek Gotham” by Assume vivid astro focus , Nina Chanel Abney, Greg Bogin, Mira Dancy, Raul De Nieves, Michael Dotson, Sebastian Errazuriz, Nir Hod, Todd James, Misaki Kawai, KAWS, Robert Lazzarini, Austin Lee, Taylor McKimens, Matthew Palladino and Erik Parker.
“Iconography” is represented, for example, by the recognizable color scheme and crossed-out eye imagery of KAWS. And Brito points to another pairing as particularly powerful: “In the case of Nina Chanel Abney, she wanted to be paired with ‘democracy,’ which the Greeks invented,” Brito says. “She is an African-American woman trying to convey the idea that we can all be equal.”