A retrospective exhibition curated by Louiza Karapidakis dedicated to the artist's books created by the great Greek painter during the entirety of his career.
Yiannis Psychopedis is a pioneering Greek artist who produced and exhibited artist's books in Greece, Germany, Belgium, and Italy. During his long artistic journey, he has illustrated a variety of literary and poetic works that were published in special, limited editions, and produced a series of works by the structure of the leporellos. He used these accordion-like books, ideal for extended storytelling, to develop his favorite themes through pictures. In his visual intervention, he integrates on the surface of the leporello’s pages his concerns, doubts and critical views on social and political issues. He also creates multimodal artist’s books, which have never been presented to the public.
The curator of the exhibition, Louiza Karapidakis, comments on the exhibition: "Artist's books are a category of art, an autonomous genre and, especially, another form of artistic expression and visual experimentation, such as performances or art installations. An artist's book is a work of visual art and simultaneously a collector's item, the artist himself being the exclusive creator, in contrast to an art book, an illustrated book, a bibliophilic edition, or an art book, whose creators can be various people of different expertise, an artist, an author, a poet, a bookbinder, a graphic designer, the printer, etc. The features of Psychopedis' painting remain unchanged in the artist's books with its organized realistic references of a fragmentary performance, alluding to an idiosyncratic spirituality with meditative overtones."
