Love me if you dare
Dare to love
“Et dès que je l’aperçois, Alors je sens en moi, Mon coeur qui bat…”
(La vie en rose)
The idea for the exhibition “Love me if you dare” (“Aime moi… Si tu peux!”) was conceived for the Heraklion Museum of Visual Arts, the life’s work of our friend the collector Kostis Schizakis, and grew out of the exhibition “Eros – Iros”, organised by the Museum exactly two years earlier. It is also a great joy and an honour that the same exhibition is scheduled to travel to Athens, to the welcoming exhibition space of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation.
The exhibition’s title, the Greek rendering of the title of Yann Samuell’s French film “Jeux d’enfants”, sets out, as the film does, to show that love is a game more thrilling than life itself. The works of the 54 distinguished artists who honour the exhibition with their participation follow the same anxious, labyrinthine path.
In the film, literally a whole lifetime passes before the protagonists, Sophie and Julien, say “I love you”. Because of a stubborn childhood game, 80 years go by before a love story, magnificent in its simplicity, finally unfolds: “Do you dare?” “I dare!” The film’s protagonists dare to do anything forbidden; they laugh and they hurt each other. And they do literally everything except admit that they love each other. And so life rolls on and the years go by. But love, stubbornly, still lies in wait and blossoms…
Two people who love each other deeply are capable of anything: of the very best and of the very worst. And the only rule that holds is simply that there are no rules. In selecting the works for the exhibition of the same name, the central theme remained this unbearable, wonderful game, which so often goes beyond accepted extremes and our own personal limits. In our visual narrative, which can be read in every possible way, lurk the ability or the inability to say “I love you”. The relief of saying “I need you”, the need to say “Stay”. The possibility of uttering dark phrases left hanging in the air, such as “Play this game with me”, “Hurt me as much as you can”, “Love me, more than you can”. The daring to ask: “Can you bear to lose me?” or “Can you bear to keep me?” And then: “Can you bear to surpass yourself again and again?”, “Can you bear to go beyond the limits?” The fierce desire for an answer to “Can you bear to be hurt?” or “Can you bear not to hurt me?” And then: “How far can you bear to go without me?”, “How far do you dare to go for me?”…
The artist friends who agreed, with tender enthusiasm, to take part in this game – one, above all, of self-knowledge and confession – put forward very personal works: works that penetrate the sanctum of the self, works that dare to look into the mirror of the other, works that delve into the innards of mind and feeling. Works that dare to love beyond space and time, with heart-rending beauty and poetic intensity, just like the artists who made them.
Participating artists:
Giannis Adamakis, Christina Aktidi, Dimitris Andreadakis, Nektarios Aposporis, Anna Achilleos, Alexis Veroukas, Eirini Vogiatzi, Marios Voutsinas, Vasilis Garyfallakis, Savvas Georgiadis, Stratigoula Giannikopoulou, Maria Grigoriadi, Dikaia Despotaki, Giannis Dimitrakis, Maria Diakodimitriou, Frangiskos Doukakis, Konstantinos Esslin, Apostolis Itskoudis, Minas Kambitakis, Voula Karambatzaki, Theofilos Katsipanos, Nikos Kranakis, Maro Kornilaki, Dimitris Kretsis, Eleni Kyriazopoulou, Magda Leventakou, Lydia Margaroni, Varvara Mavrakaki, Konstantinos Mavrakakis, Stella Meletopoulou, Timos Batinakis, Giannis Bekiaris, Georgia Bliatsou, Rouli Boua, Christos Pallantzas, Gefso Papadaki, Maria Pastra, Triantafyllos Patraskidis, Stelios Petroulakis, Giorgos Saltaferos, Miltos Skouras, Stefanos Souvatzoglou, Vasilis Soulis, Marina Stellatou, Lena Tatarida, Dimitris Tzanis, Antonis Titakis, Katerina Tsembeli, Vaso Tringa, Virginia Filippousi, Athina Chatzi, Nikos Christoforakis, Giorgos Chouliaras, Aristeidis Chrysanthopoulos.
Iris Kritikou
Curator of the exhibition
