Even if you're thinking of trips you can't do, maybe trips you don't want to do, Alexis Akrithakis's work is what allows you to think both twice. He often talks about life and love, about desire and trauma, as if talking about paradise and hell. We have been told stories with language, stories through persistent little painting gestures (the famous "tsiki tsiki"), stories through an iconography that often brings forth suitcases, boats or anything like a toy. In the work of the MOMus collection, the plane flies into a red evening sky, in which the Big Bear glows with neon light, and awakens memories different for each one. [Alexis Akrithakis, Airplane, 1982, plastic color, wood, neon, Donation of Alexander Iolas to Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, MOMus - Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections]

The Futurist poets and painters in Russia professed that a sweeping subversion of the world as we know it is necessary in order to open the way to a brighter future. They believed that the abolition of old values and axiomatic principles will enable humanity to revisit its relation with the universe and with nature, and consequently to obtain limitless potential. When the world has turned into chaos, they would assert in 1913, “new, unexpected and invisible connections” will be revealed. Their model of the man of the future - the Futurist hero - was the aviator, the man who succeeded in overcoming nature’s limitations and achieve the ultimate freedom by flying in the air. Aleksei Morgunov’s “Standing Figure (Aviator)” belongs to this series of visual and literary avant-garde works of art, which support the Futurist belief that after a historic reorganization of the order of the world, humanity will emerge stronger. [Aleksei Morgunov, “Standing Figure (Aviator)”, 1912-1913, Oil on canvas, MOMus -Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection]

The parade historically evolved as a public event that kept the national morale high, serving in parallel and briefly as an arena of social cohesion, especially in the urban environments that are characterized by heterogeneity and anonymity. As an event it is taking place on national holidays, that is in a day off from work and a condition that favors gathering. It is also an opportunity for the younger and for the older to see with bare eyes the well-polished gear of war, to inspect the protection mechanism against any kind of outside threat. The gathering of a wider audience for a mostly military procession is bearing automatically adrenaline. In the recent period, and in an era of extended peace, doubts have been risen for the parade’s necessity and expense at a time with adverse financial weather conditions. This year is the only perhaps in the recent history of the country in which parades have been called off, as the highest priority is another war, that of public health against an invisible enemy. It may be then a sudden chance for someone to recollect emotions and memories on the phenomenon, to weigh presences and absences, the value of habit against that of change. [Photo: Yiannis Stylianou, Parade, 1967, ©Yiannis Stylianou Archive / MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography]