Collider/μη-τόπος/非地/Sichtfeld, Photoworks by Thanos Zakopoulos

Great news struck us early this morning, when we received the email from Thanos Zakopoulos and Katia Meneghini, two promising artists, designers, founders of the CTRLZAK Art & Design Studio but most of all dear friends. CTRLZAK Art & Design Studio presents a book project collecting photography by Thanos Zakopoulos from 2004 till 2009. Collider/μη-τόπος/非地/Sichtfeld is a project involving an international team of four people from different disciplines collaborating to make something that is more than just a simple photography book.

Chinese graphic designer Huang Yang curated the selection of photographs for the book and directed its layout, printing and production. New texts inspired by the images were contributed by Swiss film and photography critic Thomas Pfister and by British artist and writer Alistair Gentry. The quadruple, multilingual title reflects the diverse approaches that each person brought to this collaborative publication.

Thanos Zakopoulos lets us have through his photos a view of his vision, his perception, his imagination of the world. On first glance his photos appear realistic, but on a closer look they leave reality behind. He goes about the world around us, with the eye of an archeologist of today and other times with the eye of an extraterrestrial visitor. He captures with his camera, things, places, conditions, analogies, discrepancies that for us are trivial and therefore unnoticeable. His art can be either embraced or dismissed; in any case, we experience a very subjective perception of the world. Accept this invitation to a different view, which widens our field of vision and then you will see the world through different eyes, through the eyes of the artist.

Thomas Pfister

What a tourist Thanos Zakopoulos, isn't he! -together with Thomas Pfister, Alistair Gentry, and graphic designer Huang Yang- has created a universe that spectacularizes the epiphenomenon of global capitalism, cobbled from elements of the imagined past and the possible (hoped for? dreaded?) future, a place we, in a sense, already know. I think J. G. Ballard would have liked Collider/μη-τόπος/非地/Sichtfeld.

Lewis Baltz

The book project will be presented initially in Italy on two occasions:

1. Wednesday 23rd of February, Design Library, via Savona 11, Milan, 18:30 o’ clock


2. Friday 4th of March, Apartamento Lago, Sestiere San Polo 205, Rialto Venice, 18:30 o’ clock