Charalambos and Vaso Sergiou explore the position and value of the individual artist today, through the creation of a series of installations under the common title "Group exhibition". The installations are being projected as group projects, Charalambos and Vasso registering as the curators of other artists, whereas in reality they are the only existent artists. In "Do not feed the humans" Charalambos and Vaso create both the artworks and the artists to whom they attribute the works; in other installations they create the artworks and credit them to historically renowned artists, while also supplying a modified biographical reference of the artist, as a myth that narrates the genesis of the particular artwork from the artist's behalf. The truth about the artworks and the artists is revealed only in the end, ushering the viewer to return and... recycle the whole meaning of the installation in light of the newly disclosed dimension of things. Thus, effectuating a hermeneutic bifurcation, i.e. different levels of visual reading, whose differential conflict reveals the determinative contribution of perceived artist intentionality to the viewer's aesthetic interpretation.
The projection of the artist's biography modifies the viewer's awareness by inducing the element of artistic intentionality and setting up the preconditions of visual interpretation. The inscription of artistic intentionality can radically modify the meaning of an artwork, evoke another semantic connotation, reinforce it or even impoverish it.
The extent to which the hypostasis of the artist affects the aesthetic appreciation of "Do not feed the humans" can be discovered by the viewer after returning to the artworks and substituting the fake genetic inscriptions with the ones of Charalambos and Vaso.
Nevertheless, the installation "Do not feed the humans" is not a scientific experiment meant to prove or support the meaning of the artist-creator in aesthetic interpretation. Beyond the agony expressed regarding the importance or unimportance of the creator in the viewer's mind, the artwork constitutes a radical artistic endeavor in itself. Charalambos and Vaso Sergiou create artworks not as mere objects, but as a general situation that surrounds the object and constitutes an interpretative whole. They subvert the visual tradition that maintains a restricted view of artworks as disenchanted, isolated objects in space. Charalambos and Vaso do not merely create visual objects, but they re-create a whole epoch, a genetic atmosphere that surrounds the art-object and enriches the visual interpretation.
Christos Hadjioannou