Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

ΆPEIRON, by Dimitra DEDE

at the Galerie du Château d’Eau, Toulouse (FR) until May 15th, 2022

A perfect picture! What are we talking about?!
A sophisticated display, generated by the latest technology stuffed with pixels and settings upon insensitive sensors ? Thanks to some gallerists and publishers’ intuition and bravery, it’s more often a captured image than a transformed one, whatever the technique, becoming a correspondence – completed or still wandering – between a shared world and the a sincere artist’s inner-self. A subjectivity accepted by photographers like Martin Bogren, Gaël Bonnefon, Arno Brignon, just to name a few whose work Toulouse’s public is familiar to.
“What you do knows what you are, is you”  wrote the psychiatrist Lacan. With photography too.
Dimitra Dede’s exhibition is mapping a way forward to that urge for writing and creating – here with the image – that amplifies the experience of life.

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Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

The pictures of the Greek artist based in London Dimitra Dede express all that in a whisper, a fugitive vision opening on a space either refuge, either torment. At first glance, the tone of Dimitra’s photos wraps the viewer in an atmosphere whose absence of figurative cues may be confusing. Undefined contours, a fine palette of grays, merging lines and curves, a mix of textures with assertive grain slowly compose a wavering dynamic, emphasized by the framing in which the photos, printed on light Japanese fine art paper*, are separated from the background, seem suspended within the frame. In what world are we then ? Dimitra explains:

My  work is exactly the face of my inner thoughts, feelings, questions and forces expressed as sincerely as I can.

Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

The exhibition’s title perfectly summarizes that singular universe. The word apeiron comes from ancient Greek and – according to the pre-socratic scolar and philosopher Anaximander – refers to the original principle, the source, the repository of any thing, eternal and industructible, the cause of everything’s generation and the destruction (Wikipedia). It was Dimitra’s publisher who saw in that word the representation of her photography. Dimitra agrees:

There is this fundamental idea behind almost all of my work, probably as a representation of an inner quest. We come from a dark unknown and we end in a dark unknown, in the meantime there is this flash of light, life, into which we come with no knowledge, no direction and we try to find our way and purpose.

Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

To match that personal universe, the picture’s making is based on an intuitive process, mixing photography, painting, and chemicals. The result can obviously not be controlled 100 % but is still fecund for Dimitra:

Surprises are my favorite and accidents are also  welcome. Of course I cannot completely control the chemicals I use or fire or anything, completely. When I see a negative or a print I have this almost automatic response for how the final image “should be” in my mind, then I start working towards that. I might change my mind later and rework it but that’s more or less my approach.

The exhibition – created in Napoli at Cristina Ferraiulo’s Spot Home Gallery (Naples) – gathers a selection of pictures from the books Mayflies (2019**) and the more recent Apeiron (2021). Launched in early April, 2022 at the Galerie du Chateau d’Eau in Toulouse, it is Dimitra Dede’s very first exhibition in France.

Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

As mentioned by Christian Caujolle, artistic advisor to the Chateau d’Eau Gallery, in his welcome address, the arrangement or distribution of the works inside the gallery creates a singular dynamic of constellations alterning between black and white pictures and frames, suddenly punctuated by rare compositions in color … Each venue calls for a specific organization developed through a patient dialog between the artist and the gallerists. In Toulouse, a subtle configuration creates more than a circuit: a refined scenography magnetized by the group of small frames placed on the gallery’s back wall that forces the viewer into close contact with them. Traversing an exhibition organized in such a way brings up some sort of a dramatic storytelling, aspiring, driving you anxious to read the very last lines. But no epilogue here, neither spectacular turns of events. Dimitra Dede’s universe is of those that infuse in the viewer’s spirit, even heart.

Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

Immersion, emergence, accident, gentle rocking as in utero, impermanence, vulnerability, outpouring, melancholy, atmospheric breakaway, refuge, sliding, time forever lost, … words, or rather sensations that spin around in our spirit. A primal seduction operates on the viewer’s path. Some sort of trouble occurs, but that fertile trouble welcomes all sorts of emotions, to each his own. You may wish to stay there, slowly connect to your own inner territories, since Dimitra’s images are giving keys, encouraging viewers to identify the path to them.

That is the real power of Dimitra’s genuinely poetic writing.

Apeiron © Dimitra Dede

Many thanks to Matilda Holloway for her review on this English version of an article initially published on L’Essentiel de la Culture.

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Exhibition at la Galerie Château d’eau  in Toulouse (FR)  until May 15th, 2022
Ápeiron, the catalogue of the exhibition, published by Spot Home Gallery, is available at the Chateau d’eau’ shop

Ápeiron, the book is published in a luxury edition by Origini Edizioni

Dimitra Dede, the website

* prints by François Leblond at the Moon-prints Lab inBerlin.

** Mayflies. Sold-out but available for consultation at the Galerie du Château d’Eau’s library in Toulouse