THREAD VARIATIONS
The inaugural Art Rug Projects by Soutzoglou collaboration is with Philippos Theodorides, an Athens-based artist who works in painting, ceramics and illustration. This is the first in a series of projects with contemporary artists, through which they are invited to create new artworks using the handmade carpet as a creative and expressive artistic medium.
For the exhibition of this collaboration, Thread Variations, five recent paintings by Philippos have been translated into handmade carpets in silk and wool, woven knot by knot on the loom by experienced artisans. Just like in music, where every performance of the same work differs, each handmade carpet maintains its own uniqueness, revealing new, fascinating aspects of the work - thanks to the luster, the texture and the color properties inherent in the materiality and the artisanal detail of the handmade carpet.
Philippos Theodorides’s paintings combine abstract expressionist and formalist influences with a particular sensitivity in gesture and the layering of color on the canvas. In recent years, his work acquires more and more clarity in form and compositional maturity, achieving a simplicity that remains nonetheless rich, all the while being in dialogue with the order and lucidity that characterizes modernism. At the same time, it incorporates elements of rhythmicality, repetition and transformation borrowed from the world of music, for which the artist harbors a heartfelt love.
Thread Variations is presented at the two Soutzoglou showrooms in Athens from 02 December 2021 to 19 February 2022.
Artist bio
Philippos Theodorides was born in Cyprus in 1978. He began his studies in London (University of Surrey, Roehampton, 1999-2002) where he studied Art for the Community and continued at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, in the workshop of Jannis Psychopedis (2003-2008). As an illustrator, he has been awarded with the State Illustration Award for Children Literature in 2014 and an EBGE prize for the illustration of an advertisement by Bold Ogilvy & Mather, in 2016. He has presented solo exhibitions in Greece and Cyprus, and has participated in several group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. He lives and works in Athens.
