Jul 24th 2021

Wrightwood 659, the Chicago art space devoted to presenting socially engaged art and architecture, proudly announces free virtual and in-person public programming complementing its critically-acclaimed exhibition, Yannis Tsarouchis: Dancing in Real Life, closing in four weeks on Saturday, July 31, 2021. The versatile series of programming consists of film screenings, a curators talk, a scholars panel and an exhibition-concluding expert talk. Tsarouchis (1910–1989) is widely regarded as one of the greatest Greek artists of the 20th century yet Dancing in Real Life is his first extensive U.S. exhibition. Featuring some 250 works that span the arc of the artist’s career, the exhibition includes his groundbreaking and erotic series of male portraits and nudes, which constituted a radical recoding of conventional gender roles represented in 1930s Modernism. Yannis Tsarouchis: Dancing in Real Life is curated by Androniki Gripari, Chair of the Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation in Athens, and Adam Szymczyk, former Artistic Director of Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2013–2017).

Jointly hosted by Wrightwood 659 and the Comfort Station, Codes of Radical Persistence is a screening program which aims to bring awareness to the evolving lexicon of queer persistence within Greece from the post-war era to the present day. The screening series features a documentary Kaliarda (2015) by actress and director Paola Revenioti on Kaliarda, a secret language of the homosexual community in Greece from the end of World War II through the regime change in the 70s. The program also premieres a new virtual performance, Affect Alien, by Athens-based artist Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou Bunny which intertwines the experience of the famous activist and rebetiko singer Sotiria Bellou with her close friend Yannis Tsarouchis. The films in this program will be on view virtually at wrightwood659.org/programs/ for the week following the July 24th premiere.

Free public programming providing context for Yannis Tsarouchis: Dancing in Real Life advance registration required at wrightwood659.org.

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