Curator | Dimitris Palaiocrassas and Maria Marangou

NEON’s exhibition Flying over the Abyss, previously presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, opens at the Contemporary Art Centre of Thessaloniki, an independent section of the State Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition is curated by Dimitris Paleocrassas and Maria Marangou.

Participating artists, both international and Greek, have been inspired by Ascesis: The Saviors of Gods (Ασκητική), the spiritual exercises written by the renowned Cretan thinker, Nikos Kazantzakis.

We came from an abyss of darkness; we end in an abyss of darkness: the interval of light between one and another we name life.

Nikos Kazantzakis

The exhibition will establish a creative dialogue between the artists’ works and the essay, tracing the journey towards enlightenment from the time of birth until death.  The original manuscript of Ascesis is on display courtesy of The Nikos Kazantzakis Museum – the first time that it will have been exhibited in Thessaloniki.

The exhibition includes works from the following artists:  Marina Abramović | Alexis Akrithakis | Matthew Barney | Hans Bellmer | Lynda Benglis | John Bock | Louise Bourgeois | Heidi Bucher | Helen Chadwick | Savvas Christodoulides | Abraham Cruzvillegas | Robert Gober | Asta Gröting | Jim Hodges | Jenny Holzer | Kostas Ioannidis | Mike Kelley | William Kentridge | Martin Kippenberger | Sophia Kosmaoglou |  Sherrie Levine | Stathis Logothetis | Ana Mendieta | Maro Michalakakos | Doris Salcedo | Kiki Smith | Costas Tsoclis | Mark Wallinger

Our warmest thanks to the D.Daskalopoulos Collection and Nikos Kazantzakis Museum for their generous loans to the exhibition.