Free entrance with just a click…
The Michael Cacoyannis Foundation presents
A new 3D experience
…in Art
The Michael Cacoyannis Foundation is undertaking a new initiative and introduces to the public the digital space it has created with the aim of offering a space to artists to exhibit their work across the world, so that… the whole world can get to know them!
The new 3D gallery of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation offers visitors a unique experience through a full tour of the exhibition and unlimited time with the works!
The art platform of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation gives the opportunity to painters, visual artists, photographers, sculptors, to exhibit their work and to come into contact with the public, with curators, with art-lovers and collectors and, of course, with one another, across the globe, through a ne 3D world.
This new project of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation begins with the much-discussed and well-attended exhibition of the artist Michalis Michail, one of the most important comic book creators of the 80s, which were hosted in the exhibition areas of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation from March 4 to April 7 2022.
…35 years after his departure, his escape, the Cacoyannis Foundation, re-introduces to the public this multi-expressive artist, who, through STEVE MPRIZAS, winks at us, saying “At the last moment, babe, there will always be a hero..” now in 3D!
Michalis Michail, living, acting and creating alone in the crowd, has expressed deeply personal emotions with such alarming honesty so that the spectator or reader may discover himself within the works.
This tender, almost romantic, yet structurally (self)-sarcastic artist, has uniquely expressed the harsh social reality of the post-revolutionary period in the wild decade of the 1980s. A sensitive receiver and a powerful transmitter. Like when the iconic comic book hero of Steve Mprizas meets Ross Andru’s (1927 – 1993) Spider-man and the latter reveals that… life is not always happy…
Michalis Michail took us for a ride in the electric modern city employing even colour to demonstrate its darkness. Always through contrasts, dipoles in fragile balance: Phantasmagoria and decline, abandonment. Tenderness and violence. Light and darkness. Noise and silence. Passion, ecstasy, and deprivation. He introduced us to the heroes and antiheroes of the streets, the perpetrators and the victims, whom he respected, treating them with exactly the same value. He was introduced to us through the “bipolar” hero of Steve Mprizas. A modern paper hero, a spider-man who used the city’s electrical wiring as his web. A lone hero who wanted to connect with everyone and so he plugged in.
In his arsenal, along with his rare talent, he had the scientific knowledge about advertising, communication and in general about pop culture and its expressive means, mainly the pictorial ones, he could render from the inside but also deconstruct, to oppose the false, glossy representation of a consumer euphoria that haunted his generation (…and himself) as a self-fulfilling prophecy. He gave flesh and blood to the ghosts of the technocratically-held, deprived ideology of his time and beyond. He recorded these mysteries, electing to leave all questions unanswered. And creating his own “iparxikopima” (“soulprint”) (word-loan from the graffiti he loved so much, in the neighborhood of Exarcheia) he left us alone with his works, at the age of thirty…
We warmly thank Mrs. Stella Michail for providing the works.
Exhibition curators: Dora Vyzovitou, Elena Papadimitriou
A few words about Michail:
He was born in 1957 in Zaire. He grew up in Athens. From 1979 to 1981, he studied graphic arts (Institut St. Luc École Supérieure des Arts Plastiques) visual communication and advertising (Academie Royal des Beaux Arts – Brussels), photography (I.N.R.C..), Layout (CAD) and engraving (Atelier Somvile). He was a member of the artistic group Moi et les Autres. He worked as an art director in the advertising companies Ikon and First and collaborated with the magazines Ena, Tachydromos and Playboy.
In 1979, deeply influenced by the American and, mainly, European comics, he published his first work in the last issue of the Greek comic magazine, Koloumbra. From 1985 to 1987 he was published in the leading comic book magazine, Babel, with great success. In 1986 he participated in the comics sector in the Art Action II Kallidromio within the framework of the Biennale of the Mediterranean Youth. He participated in numerous sketch and poster exhibitions and presented his drawings at the “Syn” gallery.
In 1987 (October 29 – November 13) Babel organized the first International Comics Exhibition entitled “The World of Comics and more” at the “Evmaros” complex. Renowned foreign artists and most of the Greek artists participated and the exhibition was dedicated to the great Michalis Michail who had just recently embarked on his parting journey.
In 1988 at “Evmaros”, under the tireless care of his mother, Stella, and his close friend and collaborator, screenwriter, Stavros Vidalis, a large retrospective was held in which the entire range of the artist’s work was presented. In 1992 the complete monograph was published with almost all his artistic production, from advertising, iconography, paintings and comics, and texts from the most relevant Greek historians and art critics: Athina Schina, Dora Iliopoulou-Rogan, Harry Kambouridis. The presentation of the tribute volume accompanied by an exhibition took place at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre. In the same year, the Greek participation in the Biennale of Young Artists in Bologna was dedicated to him.
Free entrance for the public, with just a click at online exhibition…
