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Theodoros Zafeiropoulos is a scholar of the Onassis Foundation and one of the visual artists who represented Greece in the 16th Biennale of European and Mediterranean Young Artists entitled "errors allowed" that took place in Ancona, Italy, from June 6th to July 7th, 2013.
His work entitled Failure of a Natural Event reveals a dialectic playful inquiry concerning the meaning of failure, through a series of recorded actions that took place in the summer of 2009 in the context of the Skowhegan residency program for emerging visual artists in the state of Maine, USA. The 23-minute video documentary transubstantiates physical damage and environmental consciousness, adopting methods of the gradual transformation of materials and circular re-organization.
With a giant tree uprooted and toppled by a hurricane as a starting point and with the help of the community of artists participating in the program, a series of experimental practices are applied and serve as constructions around a fictitious state of "success". Overestimated impressions and operations which either, due to conscious lack of know-how or limited technological support, generate a series of "staged failures". A line of consecutive impressions, interviews and trials which escalate in a fruitless achievement of transcendence.
Zafeiropoulos' visual and research practice over the past few years aims to elevate the "importance of failure" as a poetic transference of a model from the epistemology of Physics to the field of Art. The principal element is to explore rationales and methodologies from History through the genealogy of archives, from Archaeology through the concept of excavation, and from Anthropology through performative action.
This project in its entirety models a natural coincidence as a material process through the extreme physical encounter, attempting to decipher the ontological dimension of matter. The everlasting journey of discovery through a series of erroneous prognoses and the observation of unexpected events emerging throughout the holistic course of transformation are the basic guidelines.
Every one of the abstracts in the project comprises images and narratives of almost metaphysical character, which invite viewers to reflect upon the contemporary lack of context, both literally and figuratively, and to imaginatively wander in the captivating densely wooded inland of North America. The project was initially presented at the Hellenic American Union in 2011 with the title Intake (curated by S. Bahtsetzis) and was complemented with a catalogue publication. In 2012, it was at Elika gallery (curated by S. Bahtsetzis). In 2012, in the form of a video installation within the framework of an event organized by the Scholars' Association at the Onassis Cultural Center.
Theodoros Zafeiropoulos was born in 1978. He graduated with honours from the School of Fine Arts, Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki (1998-2003). He participated in the Erasmus program in the University of Barcelona (2000-2001) with a state scholarship and he obtained a Master's degree in Fine Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts (2004-2006). He graduated and was honoured with the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award from the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts, New York, USA as recipient of Fulbright, Gerondelis and Al. Onassis Foundations' scholarships (2007-2009) In summer 2009, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is a current PhD candidate in the School of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece. He has presented 4 solo exhibitions and has participated in many international group exhibitions, artist residency programs and projects. His works can be found in many public and private collections in Greece and abroad. Until May 2013, he was a resident artist at the Flux Factory in New York and he attended the USF residence program in Bergen, Norway until late June 2013. He lives and works in Athens and New York.
