PRESENTATION: VAAAFAT (Visual Artists Alumni Association Of Fine Arts Thessaloniki)-Pharmakon/Venenum
The use of drugs and chemicals in art, particularly in contemporary art, both as an object and as a theoretical concept, has been explored by numerous artists. At the forefront of this exploration were the Young British Artists in the early 1990s, with key representatives such as Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn. Quinn mixes the drugs on which these individuals rely into the resin from which each figure is cast. Their bodies lie helplessly on the ground, reminiscent of the fallen children of Niobe in ancient Greek art. Only modern medicine can sustain these individuals.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo & Video: Leonidas Gkelos, Andreas Laskaris, Kleio Vlachou
In contrast, Damien Hirst’s uniquely aesthetic mirrored cabinets unfold a chromatic palette of pharmaceuticals, shifting from treatment to healing and destruction. The pastel hues of the medicines, which inherently contain both cure and poison, create a personal artistic universe. The viewer cannot help but be mesmerized by the kaleidoscopic display of waves of complex chromatic emotions and dissonances, reflected in the multitude of pills against the gleaming mirror behind them. And if all this seemed far removed from Greek culture and reality in the early 1990s, today, that the social conditions have changed and pharmaceuticals have become a part of our daily lives, from the uncharted waters of the past, a new path is being forged “business as usual” that a multitude of people, especially the younger generations, are called to follow… With the illusion that they are liable to have a serious effect and ease visible and invisible pains or escape from worlds and conditions both real and imaginary, they ultimately contribute to the creation of a new global narrative—one that want humanity enslaved by science, distanced from nature, and from the healing that comes through it. From self-healing, empowerment, and consciousness(!). “This will make you feel better”—this was the promise given by the healers of the ancient world to those who suffered from illnesses, whose treatments were intertwined with the stars, spirits, and magic. This, too, is the promise we hope the contemporary artist will embrace—using and reversing the power of art as a form of healing, as a remedy rather than a poison or a negative reflection of a society deeply unwell. Through their work, the artist has the potential to create a new narrative—one where, like a contemporary “Siberian Shaman” they are called to act as an intermediary between the material and the immaterial, the physical and the spiritual. They are called to transmute the toxic elements of Amanita Muscaria -the ugliness, disease, and pathology of our time- into Apollonian Light, from which knowledge and balance will flow. Likewise, an work of art can often serve as a bridge—guiding the viewer on an ano-throsko journey, an upward path, the word ano-throsko is the etymological essence of the word anthropos (human). Rather than leading downward into Hades—like the descent promoted today through mainstream media and social networks, with their orchestrated culture of violence and the dehumanization of human nature—art has the power to elevate. Because art is, and will continue to be, the elixir of life…
VAAAFAT ( Visual Artists Alumni Association Of Fine Arts Thessaloniki), Pharmakon / Venenum, Art Thessaloniki International Fair, 2025, Photo & Video: © & Courtesy Leonidas Gkelos, Andreas Laskaris, Kleio Vlachou
VAAAFAT ( Visual Artists Alumni Association Of Fine Arts Thessaloniki), Pharmakon / Venenum, Art Thessaloniki International Fair, 2025, Photo & Video: © & Courtesy Leonidas Gkelos, Andreas Laskaris, Kleio Vlachou