John Baldessari, "Teaching a Plant the Alphabet" , 1972 (Videostill)

WORKSHOP FOR ADULTS: “EXERCISING THE GAZE”

Visual literacy

March 2023

The visual artist Michalis Kallimopoulos has long been concerned with issues of visual literacy. Since 2014 he has organised several workshops in which the image is approached not theoretically but in also in practice. In his new workshop entitled “Exercising the Gaze” that will take place at EMΣT, Kallimopoulos will attempt to bridge our everyday experience with contemporary works of art from the museum’s collection and temporary exhibitions.

Visual literacy refers to the ability to interpret, negotiate and make sense of information presented in the form of an image. Practicing visual literacy enhances our mental and emotional skills. We practice observing, comparing, analyzing, making sense of and interpreting visual stimuli.

The aim of the workshop is to acquire basic skills of constructing meaning from various works of art and from the visible world in general. An image is defined as anything that is visible, both by the eyes and mentally within our mind (e.g. imagination, memory). The workshop will be based on the viewing of images, transformed into verbal impressions through dialogue; it includes individual or group exercises and games.

 

PROGRAMME

First workshop | Thursday, March 9, 2023 | Time: 18.00 – 21.00
What is visual literacy? Sight as a tool; “Image and I” as a single entity; Visual perception and awareness; The Subject of an Image; Subjectivity of the gaze; The visual environment: slow and fast thinking; From “closed” to “open” attention; Exercises – games.

 

Second workshop | Sunday, March 12, 2023 | Time: 11.30 – 14.30
Natural vs Human-made image; Secondary information; In and out of our cognitive environment: the familiar vs the unfamiliar; Observation techniques and reducing the detail to the whole; Poetics of sight: an introduction to visual rhetoric and communication; Symbols: image and speech; Exercises – games.

 

Third workshop | Thursday March 16, 2023 | Time: 18.00 – 21.00
Information outside the image; (Personal) judgment and cultivation of interpretation; Ideas and creative thinking; Psychological phenomena and their use in visual rhetoric; Body language; Critical thinking, ethics and politics: Artificial intelligence, manipulated photography and fake news; Exercises – games.

 

Fourth workshop | Sunday March 19, 2023 | Time: 11.30-14.30
Field work and contact with contemporary artwork in museum spaces: Project selection and approach with the tools of visual literacy. Creative thinking and stimuli; Signification; Project and project title; Practice with the aim of approaching both art and the visible world with our own eyes; Exercises – games.

 

Artist’s Biography

Michalis Kallimopoulos was born in 1970 in Athens. He studied painting at the Academia di Belle Arte in Venice and sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts. In 2007, he presented his first solo exhibition in Athens at the “Nees Morfes” gallery. In 2013, 2016 and 2020 he held solo exhibitions with works of painting, drawing and photography but mainly sculpture at the A.antonopoulou.art gallery.

Kallimopoulos has worked as a set painter at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London and collaborated as an illustrator with the Acropolis Museum and the Museum of Cycladic Art. He has participated in group exhibitions, most notably in “No Country for Young Men” at BOZAR (Brussels, Belgium) curated by Katerina Gregos. Artworks by Kallimopoulos can be found in the Dakis Joannou Collection, the Sotiris Felios collection, among others. As an art educator, he has been designing and implementing programs for adults and children since 1998.