[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DycE8oIaYI]

Video by: S*M*A*S*H

Apply softly is a new, international producer’s initiative presenting itself for the first time at Preview Berlin with the works of 5 young artists: Antonakis Christodoulou, Nikos Goulis, Dora Economou, Despina Stokou and Michalis Zacharias.

The artists are friends in myspace and facebook (4 of them) but not in life, at least not the conventional way. They exchange emails, comments, gifts and bites. They buy and sell each other, test their personalities compatibility and if they would make good travel pals- in fact some of them would- if they were not sick, afraid, bored, addicted to flying.
They remember how the other one looked and drew 10 years ago, but they don’t know each other’s home phone numbers-or some of them would, if they had a home long enough or bothered or didn’t live in the office. The list of facts about them that contradict each other is long- and maybe this is the one thing they have in common. In their life and in their work, individually and as a group, they constitute an explosive mix of contradictory tendencies that threatens to self-destruct every step of the way; but somehow it doesn’t.
They would all probably nod to that, though none of them would describe it in the same words.
Apply Softly is about a mythological, perverted, dramatic, iconolatric, matrix version of reality.
Apply Softly is a quote, a spell and an urge. Life gets complicated: apply softly.

Apply softly stands for an art breathing down arts neck.

-Preview Berlin, the Emerging Artfair 30.10-02.11.2008
curated by Despina Stokou