WILLIAM KLEIN EXHIBITION OPENING

 

 

 

Sunday, November 18^th marked the opening of the photography exhibition by talented director, photographer, graphic designer and painter William Klein at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition is an indivisible part of the large retrospective tribute to Klein’s work organized by the 48th Thessaloniki Film Festival.

Friends of the visual arts and cinema that had gathered early at the museum, welcomed William Klein with a warm applause. Attending the opening were the President of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, Georges Corraface, the Director Despina Mouzaki, the Artistic Director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art Denis Zaharopoulos, the curator of the exhibition Marion Inglessi, Vasilis Vasilikos, Costas Gavras and many others.

Mrs. Mouzaki revealed that this particular exhibition is being presented for the first time internationally in Thessaloniki, through the collaboration of the Thessaloniki Film Festival and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art She added that the exhibition isn’t simply an exhibition of photographs, but “printed truths of our world, seen from the eyes of a modernist and uncompromised artist like William Klein. Klein uses his lens to capture the soul of things. Through his pictures, one can see inside and behind them, not just look at them”.

 

Next, Denis Zaharopoulos, the Artistic Director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art read the welcome message sent by ex-Minister Jacques Lang, who couldn’t make it to the exhibition’s opening because of illness. “Dear William Klein, you attract people to your work with the joy that one sees time unfolding through the genius of a perceptive vision which defines your art. I salute you with all my heart which draws from your art the meaning of a promise for a better and more humane world. This promise is what keeps me today in France. I salute you with the admiration which drives me to the country that discovered the meaning of humanity and that your lens has so faithfully captured. I can see Melina Mercouri again, happy and careless, before the wounds of fascism ignited her fervent struggle to reinstitute democracy and return the marbles of the Parthenon to their birthplace. Her efforts were aimed towards a political and cultural Europe. I would like to thank the Festival, the Museum and my friends in Greece who never forget my undisputed support to this cause. I would also like to thank the Minister of Culture, Mr. Mihalis Liapis, who joined forces with us in order to honor with a symbolic image which illuminates the face of Alexander the Great, my contribution to the service of contemporary art and cultural heritage in every country of the world where the values of freedom and democracy elevate Greece and France as the establishers of culture and human creativity. I hope I have the chance to visit Greece soon and to visit its monuments. To attend the Thessaloniki Film Festival where great artists that I admire, like William Klein, are honored. The charm of his images brings us to an undeceiving world which transforms into a poem which, according to Rimbaud is read, ‘literally and in every way’”.

 

Marion Inglessi, the exhibition’s curator, used the word ‘explosion’ to characterize Klein’s work. Since February when she met the artist in Paris to prepare the exhibition, she felt that it would be the most difficult project she had ever dealt with. It was then when she discovered Klein’s never before exhibited pictures from Greece, which Klein had visited in 1957 and 1963, and which are being presented for the first time in the framework of the 48^th Thessaloniki Film Festival.

 

Receiving an enthusiastic applause, William Klein, expressed his joy for visiting Greece and noted that every time he sees his work “hung” in a different way, he remembers many images, scents and feelings that he experienced 50 or 60 years ago. Finally, he thanked Marion Inglessi and expressed his satisfaction for the exhibition’s design.