The “The other Arcadia” Foundation and the Department of Visual Arts and Art Sciences of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina, under the direction of Professor Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos, present the “Exhibition of Students from the School of Ioannina”. The exhibition opens on Wednesday 11 January 2023 at 18.00-21.00 at the art space “16 Fokionos Negri”, Athens.

This show aims to communicate the work created in a university department of Greece’s periphery in the context of the course “Painting VII” of the undergraduate cycle as well as the course “Idea and Practice of Drawing” of the postgraduate study program, which are supervised by Professor Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos.

The School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina is a relatively new department. Therefore, it needs to explore its potential as part of an excellent university, shape its distinct identity and above all communicate its work outward, which is the work of its students and its professors. The exhibition activity of a School of Fine Arts is a core part of the teaching practice because it gives opportunities to showcase the work produced but, just as importantly, it also gives students a tangible and actionable goal for their artistic practice in general. Steve Jobs had said the following quote in a speech to his employees and partners: “real artists ship”. Paraphrased slightly, Jobs meant that true artists don’t just produce, but they exhibit — and not only their work but themselves as well.
An exhibition certainly involves some risk because many things are judged in it: the abilities of the exhibiting students as well as the abilities of their supervisors and their professors. In this show, we are witnessing a dialogue between fourth-and-fifth-year students of the undergraduate course of study with works of recent graduates and now students of the visual arts’ postgraduate program of the University of Ioannina. In part, it is a show regarding the initial seeding of a budding generation. On the other hand it is an exhibition of our most recent graduates‘ achievements who have actively chosen to dig deeper in their studies as well as in themselves. In any case, both undergraduate and postgraduate students present us with their immense potential.
This exhibition is a presentation to the Athenian public of the works of a generation of students who, despite their young age, have been sorely tested by an economic crisis of over a decade and by a pandemic that locked them, like all of us, in their homes and far from the studios, the auditoria and the libraries of the University. But it is also the beginning of the collaboration of “The other Arcadia” Foundation with the new School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina, a particularly important university in the wider Greek region.