When Now Meets Then… AND WHEN THANOS KALAMIDAS MET AMIR KHATIB

An exhibition that combines paintings, installations, cartoons, creations and ideas.

"When now meets then" has nothing and everything to do with time and timing.  Thanos Kalamidas and Amir Khatib are the same age and they have similar experiences in their past that include wars, dictatorships, exile, love and hate despite the fact that Amir comes from the shores of the Euphrates and Thanos comes from the Mediterranean seaside. Add to that the traditions and culture they both inherited from their home countries you get the "then"!

But then you get the adventure of the mind, the research of an inner truth beyond traditions, rules and human laws. All these experiences and cultural roots that made the “then” became the blueprint for the “when” and all that is expressed in a dialogue with colours, creations and ideas. "When now meets then" is the quintessence of the Third Culture, it is the application, the act of the idea, the theory. Two men with different backgrounds, with different origins, meet in a third country in the borders of the North Pole and they create, and communicate through their creations, and to a further extent want to communicate through their creations with everybody.

Thanos Kalamidas has studied psychology in England and art in France, but for the past decade he has lived and created in Helsinki, Finland. His presented works cover four projects:

Jazz band: A series of a cartoon jazz band members based on a character published in magazines, newspapers as comic strips in UK, USA, Germany, France, and Greece.
Screaming: An installation with a series of portraits, digitally mastered.
State brutality: A series of digital and oil canvases representing state’s violence.
Hannibal with Angels: A series of digitally mastered oil paintings inspired by the poem “Hannibal in Rome”.


Amir Khatib has gone a long way in the world. He comes from the Tigris and Euphrates Valley, from the cradle of our civilization, but he has chosen to live in Finland, the extreme north of Europe, which is considered the laboratory of the future.

In this exhibition he presents installations and paintings from his latest work and his projects “Roots” and “Mixed media”.

GALLERIA GJUTARS
Vanha Kuninkaalantie 6, Vantaa

The exhibition will be on public view until 15th November 2009

Gallery open Monday to Friday 12:00-18:00 and weekends 12:00-17:00