Dimitris Papaioannou participated in the Grec in 2017 with The great tamer, in 2021 he returned with Transverse orientation and now arrives in Barcelona, ??after the multiple impediments caused by the pandemic, with Ink, a show that has triumphed in Athens and at other festivals where it has been presented. The Greek artist created this show in 2020, where two men dialogue in silence, one dressed and the other naked, which can be seen from Monday 24 to Wednesday July 26, at the Teatre Lliure de Montjuïc. Ink was a carte blanche commission from Torinodanza Festival and I Teatri Reggio de l’Emília. Papaioannou shares his leading role with the Greek actor Haris Fragoulis, in a double cast, where the naked man, Šuka Horn, always acts.
Ink means ink and on stage the two performers are literally bathed in dyed water. “This title is for the pop – explains Papaioannou-. It was given to me by a friend of mine, who thought that my show is like the extraction of a black sperm from an animal, with which you can write or paint.” The octopus isn’t real, but it’s a pretty realistic reproduction.
Regarding the relationship established between the two performers, the artist does not want to advance anything: “You are asking me to narrate the whole work and I can’t do that, because it is like specifying something on which I want you to meditate, so I have some personal opinions about what it is, but I don’t think they are very important and, moreover, I don’t want to impose them on the public.”
Nevertheless, the program of the show points out some questions that the show raises: “Maybe they are two artists from different generations; perhaps it is the sentinel of a dark world and a visitor who disturbs its existence; perhaps they are father and son; perhaps they embody youth and maturity or perhaps they are, one dressed and the other naked, an image of civilization and the good savage”. In any case, it will be the public, when they have seen his proposal, always filled with subjugating images, who will decide what it is about.
Plastic images, which refer to the history of art. “I think this show is different because of the dark aspect it has and the fact that I have moved away from the Renaissance. There is a bit of classicism, but I think there is a lot more expressionism. But this is the aftermath of creation, because I did not create it for this. Similarly, it is not created to narrate a certain relationship. It is created in search of something interesting between two specific personalities. But it is true that there is a strange predominance of darkness in this work compared to the previous one”.
Regarding the fact that the presence of an octopus has coincided in time with other proposals where this octopus also appears, Papaioannou replies: “I don’t have Netflix”.
