Ah, This!

The first thing one notices about “Ah, This!,” a group show curated by Helena Papadopoulos, is its curious arrangement. The entirety of the exhibition space is dedicated to the late Greek photographer George Tourkovasilis, while the works of Marietta Mavrokordatou, Polys Peslikas, and Sarah Rapson are shown in the gallery’s entrance, office, and publishing section. As the gallery proper is devoted to a deceased artist, the remaining pieces function as commentaries on a practice from the recent past. It is a bold curatorial decision and an effective one. The arrangement lends sufficient space to an important oeuvre that is not yet widely known outside of Greece, and in doing so, demonstrates its relevance to contemporary practices.

Tourkovasilis’s photographs are tender, alternating between the skillfully composed and disarmingly casual, the erotically charged and mundane. The artist once described his commitment to photography as an “illness,” which aptly suggests both the medium’s ability to pervade every aspect of life and its fluidity as a visual language. This reverence for the happenings of life manifests in the pictures’ diversity of styles and motifs, from the fixation on luxuriant hair in Untitled (Shampoo), n.d., and the unpretentious coral flowers of Untitled (Geraniums), n.d., to the lithe, vulnerable men of Untitled (Contraposto & Pieta I, II), n.d., evincing the photographer’s fascination with classicism and male beauty. These delightful vintage prints emanate sheer pleasure in the act of photographing and attest to the artist’s unwavering affection for the post-dictatorship Greece he depicted.

Other works in the show resonate beautifully with those of Tourkovasilis. The enigmatic watercolors by Peslikas, installed close to the ceiling, function as temporary frieze, chiming with the classical references in Tourkovasilis’s imagery, while Rapson’s video Sufficient Fortune, 2002, tracking a woman wearing a wig strolling in various locations, dramatizes performative construction of identities through the lens. Mavrokordatou’s Claudia 1–24, 2022, a suite of two dozen gelatin silver prints, shows the artist’s friend posing in what appears to be a fashion shoot. However, the photos lack the commercial polish of fashion photography, instead serializing moments of unaffected intimacy with a light Conceptualist touch. These are ambiguous images that also point to the malleability of photography.