{"id":42378,"date":"2025-09-25T09:42:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T09:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/42378\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T09:42:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T09:42:15","slug":"dionysios-turns-found-objects-into-sites-of-care-and-functional-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/42378\/","title":{"rendered":"dionysios turns found objects into sites of care and functional ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dionysios on Care, Improvisation, and the Passage of Time<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Multidisciplinary artist Dionysios presents Precarious Design, a series of objects and installations that explore fragility, impermanence, and improvisation. The works span design, sculpture<\/a>, and installation<\/a>, appearing suspended between utility and artifact, carrying the traces of time, use, and human care. designboom discusses with Dionysios how found and salvaged materials carry memory, how fragility becomes a source of resilience, and how his series transforms instability into functional, ritual-infused objects. The artist shares insights on shaping experience, embracing impermanence, and creating works where scarcity and care become central to design. \u2018Precariousness is not weakness; it\u2019s a form of truth. It forces you to stay alert, to remain awake to the present moment,\u2019 Dionysios notes during our interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rooted in his background in clinical psychology, the Greek artist approaches each project as a choreography of experience. \u2018I often think less like a \u201cmaker\u201d and more like a choreographer of experience: how someone interacts with the work, what they feel without realizing why, and how they might leave changed.\u2019 Dionysios\u00a0is drawn to the histories embedded in materials. \u2018They carry memory. A found object has already lived a life before it enters my work. Scratches, dents, traces of touch, passage of time. When I use it, I\u2019m not starting from zero; I\u2019m in conversation with that past,\u2019 he tells designboom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Meditation on Time | image by Raf Souliotis<\/a>, courtesy of Onassis Foundation<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

precarious design explores human interaction<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Precarious Design series was presented in two contexts during the Art Athina 2025<\/a> fair. At Taxidi Tinos\u2019 booth in the Design section, Cave Drawings inscribes sun and moon motifs in gold and silver leaf on rusted steel, their lacquered backs recalling couture linings while their corroded surfaces evoke humanity\u2019s earliest marks. Across town at the art and design platform<\/a> Spazio Altro, the exhibition PLAYDATE gathered objects including the Koutsombola (gossip bench), Balance Chair, Surrealist Side Table, and Totem. These pieces combine marble fragments, ancient timbers, and repurposed plastics into provisional yet fully functional forms, while gold leaf applied to century-old cypress logs and olive roots imbues salvaged matter with symbolic weight.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Dionysios, the conceptual approach of Precarious Design stems from his broader practice. \u2018We live in a world that sells us permanence and perfection, but in reality everything is temporary, everything shifts. Relationships, cities, even nature feel unstable. Through Precarious Design, and my practice overall, I don\u2019t try to disguise that, I highlight it,\u2019 he reflects. The series builds on the artist\u2019s ongoing exploration of impermanence, which he has pursued in other works such as Meditation on Time (2022), presented at Onassis Stegi\u2019s Pl\u00e1smata 3 in Athens, and the durational performance Meditation on Light (2023) at the Great Pyramids of Giza. Read on for our full conversation with the Athens- and Paris-based artist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Meditation on Time (2022) was presented at Onassis Stegi\u2019s Pl\u00e1smata 3 in Athens<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

designboom interviews dionysios<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

designboom (DB): You started out in clinical psychology. How does that background influence the way you create?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dionysios (D): Psychology gave me a way to think in terms of relationships and dynamics. Whether I\u2019m making a sculpture, a design object, a digital piece, or a large-scale installation, I\u2019m not just arranging forms, I\u2019m shaping behavior, atmosphere, even silence. It trained me to see the conscious and unconscious simultaneously, to notice what\u2019s expressed and what\u2019s left unspoken. I often think less like a \u2018maker\u2019 and more like a choreographer of experience: how someone interacts with the work, what they feel without realizing why, and how they might leave changed. I don\u2019t use psychology as a method anymore, but it remains the quiet foundation of how I see people, spaces, and the interactions between them.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
a crystallized truck as meditation on time, divinity, and reflection | image via @bydionysios<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DB: When did you realize you wanted to work across sculpture, installation, and digital media rather than just one medium?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

D: I don\u2019t think there was a single moment. For me, it was never about choosing a discipline. It was about choosing the right language for each idea. Sometimes an idea needs the weight of a physical object, other times it needs to stretch into space and become an environment, and other times it belongs in the digital layer that now shadows our lives. What excites me is the movement between these forms, how they overlap, contradict, or amplify each other. I guess I realized quite early that confining myself to one medium would feel like cutting the wings off the work before it even began.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
a relic from the future | image via @bydionysios<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DB: Many of your pieces use discarded or salvaged objects. What draws you to these materials?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

D: They carry memory. A found object has already lived a life before it enters my work. Scratches, dents, traces of touch, passage of time. When I use them, I\u2019m not starting from zero; I\u2019m in conversation with that past. There\u2019s also something democratic about it: these objects are ordinary, recognizable, and almost invisible in their daily use, but when you shift their context, they reveal new meanings. And personally, I like the tension between fragility and endurance, an old car part, a worn surface, an ancient piece of wood, or a marble scrap. They are both vulnerable and resilient. I am also a huge advocate for sustainability, not as a political stance, but as a way of being. There is an abundance of materials to work with and transform.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Sunset Chair | image courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DB: Can you explain Precarious Design in your own words?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

D: Precarious Design is the more functional, sculptural side of my practice. For me, it\u2019s about embracing instability rather than hiding it. We live in a world that sells us permanence and perfection, but in reality everything is temporary, everything shifts. Relationships, cities, even nature feel unstable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Through Precarious Design, and my practice overall, I don\u2019t try to disguise that, I highlight it. A work might look monumental, but if you look closer you see its sensitivity, its ability to change or even collapse. Expanding this into functional design pieces is my way of stretching the idea into the tangible, the everyday, creating objects to live with. Precariousness is not weakness; it\u2019s a form of truth. It forces you to stay alert, to remain awake to the present moment.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Balance Chair 2 | image courtesy of Spazio Altro<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DB: Your work often explores fragility and impermanence. Why are these ideas important to you?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

D: Because they are unavoidable. Everything I\u2019ve learned, through psychology, through life, through making, points back to impermanence. Objects decay, bodies age, structures fall apart. But within that transience, you also find a strange kind of eternity. Life itself is fragile and impermanent. I think it would be almost arrogant to create something that pretends to last forever. I\u2019d rather make something that speaks to the present, to this exact encounter with the viewer. If it lasts, that\u2019s beyond me. But the ephemerality, that\u2019s where the intensity comes from. It\u2019s a paradox I keep returning to: the eternal inside the temporary.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Dionysios approaches each project as a choreography of experience | image courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DB: Meditation on Light at the Pyramids sounds incredible! What was it like to show your work there?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

D: It was surreal, intense, overwhelming, probably the most transformative experience I\u2019ve had to date. I went with the intention to present a perfect gold carpet at the feet of the pyramids, only for the desert to bury it, to destroy it. That\u2019s when I truly understood my work and myself: learning to surrender to external forces and let the piece become what it is meant to be. It turned into a long-durational, performative installation rather than a monumental static object. People from the desert, camel riders, exhibition visitors, and guides all came each day to help add gold leaf, knowing it would be erased at night and start again the next day. It taught me humility and the power of collective effort. What moved me most was the fleeting nature of the work coexisting, even briefly, with something that has stood for thousands of years. That tension between the ephemeral and the eternal is exactly where my practice lives.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Meditation on Light at Great Pyramids of Giza \u2013 Art d\u2019Egypte 2023 | image courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DB: Looking ahead, what directions or experiments excite you most in your work?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

D: I want to keep pushing the boundaries of where art can live. That means larger public works in iconic locations. But also unexpected collaborations with technology, theater, maybe even cinema or fashion. I\u2019m interested in how an installation can shift when it meets the dramaturgy of a stage or the rigor of a science lab, and how an object might function in a ritual outside of the white cube. At the same time, I\u2019m continuing to explore the overlap between the physical and the digital, not in a loud, \u2018tech-first\u2019 way, but in subtle infusions where nature, light, and code intertwine. Ultimately, what excites me is keeping the work alive, unstable, open to mutation. I don\u2019t want a fixed formula. I want to surprise myself, and by extension, the audience.<\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Koutsombola chair | image courtesy of Spazio Altro<\/a><\/p>\n

\"dionysios
Dionysios portrait | image by Dio color<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

project info:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

name: Precarious Design<\/p>\n

artist: Dionysios<\/a> | @bydionysios<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/18<\/p>\n

\"Dionysios<\/p>\n

Dionysios portrait | image by George Skouloudis<\/p>\n

\"Balance<\/p>\n

Balance chair | image courtesy of Spazio Altro<\/p>\n

\"pieces<\/p>\n

pieces of marble form the base of the chair<\/p>\n

\"cave<\/p>\n

cave drawing – sun | image courtesy of taxidi Tinos<\/p>\n

\"cave<\/p>\n

cave drawing – moon | image courtesy of taxidi Tinos<\/p>\n

\"portrait<\/p>\n

portrait of the artist meditating on his work presented in Art d’Egypte 2023<\/p>\n

\"an<\/p>\n

an everyday object, reimagined<\/p>\n

\"the<\/p>\n

the exhibition PLAYDATE gathers objects including the Koutsombola (gossip bench), Balance Chair, Surrealist Side Table, and Totem<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

a gold carpet installation at the Great Pyramids of Giza<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

image by Raf Souliotis<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

image by Raf Souliotis<\/p>\n

\"Cave<\/p>\n

Cave Drawings | image courtesy of Taxidi Tinos<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

image courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\"inside<\/p>\n

inside Dionysios’ studio | image courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\"Studio<\/p>\n

Studio Totems | image courtesy of spazio Altro<\/p>\n

\"Sun<\/p>\n

Sun Moon Pendulum, part of broader collection | image courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\"Sun<\/p>\n

Sun Moon Pendulum, part of broader collection | image courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

\"Surrealist<\/p>\n

Surrealist side table | image by Spazio Altro<\/p>\n