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The need to expand their expressive mediums has led them constantly
towards new solutions as they test materials, techniques and processes
that abolish all barriers. Their passage from the experiential actions in space
to the configuration of everyday spaces involved a clear focus on renewing
our experience of everyday reality.
Their old preoccupation with the two-way relationship between art
and practicality found a new balance. Nikos Zouboulis began exploring
this dual relationship in his work as early as 1972, when he designed
a modular sculpture whose parts could function as a seat as well as a table.
The multiple combinations and practical uses of their bold and inventive
creations, the use of disparate materials and the multifaceted impressions
generated by them are all traits of a non-conformity in tune with the precepts
of post-modern design.
So in 1983 they set up Studio Metaplasi, joining forces with others
with the same ideas, such as architects Thanassis Tzivelos
and Panayotis Hatzinas and ceramist Anneta Mylonoyanni, all of them
working together as a team. What has Studio Metaplasi achieved so far?
Many important things have earned it a well-deserved position
in the international movement.
It was invited to participate in "Linea '85", the major exhibition of visual
and applied arts in Ghent, Belgium. It has been reviewed in prestigious
foreign magazines, and was awarded third prize in the exhibition "SAD '85"
at the Parisian Grand Palais. The team are currently preparing
for their first transatlantic appearance at the international exhibition of artistic
design in Chicago in May.
At the same time Zouboulis and Grekou are constantly planning new
purely artistic projects, which are thoroughly compatibility with their design
activities.
In other words, artistic concerns and applied art are complementary
elements in their work, constituting the two poles in a two-way course
which steadfastly declines the security of standardization. The words
of Camus come to my mind: "I have the loftiest idea, and the most
passionate one, of art. Much too lofty to agree to subject it to anything.
Much too passionate to want to divorce it from anything." This comes close,
I think, to what these two young people must feel about art.

Maria Kotzamani
Athens, 19 March 1986