The engagement as well as the entanglement with humans and institutions that lie within the outskirts of the society - what some still insist on addressing as “the other” - is not a formal decision; it is a political one, and definitely a need that comes from within.

The practice of Menelaos Karamaghiolis derives from a moral, a bold aesthetic spine that whatever is being generated, produced and one can even say edited, takes its final form through its subject matter. Simultaneously liberating and restrictive, allowing this is a challenging endeavor for any author. The in-between distance is very short, and at times non-existent. With most of the works that are not made for the big screen, one experiences, it feels that the stories are told by the subjects themselves. Deliriously he claims that the final goal is the moving image’s self-telling.

As it happens sometimes when telling people’s stories, the driving force is the remarkable or the amazing and love so the outcome at most times is a seemingly raw, unaltered person that speaks while describing or simply doing their doings. It is this immediacy that places this practice in the sphere of Realism, and a new hybrid genre is in the making. While what is not seen or apparent is an endless network of relationships - at most times codependent and at times problem solving - that provides to the people solutions to their everyday struggles and answers to questions unanswerable, when political systems have failed to do so.

His first solo exhibition with the gallery showcases a variety of historical, singular as well as group social portraits through their installations.

The exhibition in London, as implied through its title, shapes an entangled web of relationships, mediums and restrictions that lead to freedom through conditions of detainment.

Two portraits that become one: an adolescent inmate, who refuses to reveal the identity of the responsible, true characters that hide behind the crime for which he has been convicted and is kept imprisoned, preferring the restrictive and punishing law to a free but vengeful life. And that of his bird, a goldfinch he is nurturing, growing, aiming to breed and multiplying with the hope that one day he too will fly away.

The bird is kept free but this freedom will be interrupted with its first sexual desires and when it starts abusing its benefits. Possibly the solution lies in the animal’s castration?

When and how does an inmate become a prison guard?

And how does an inmate differ from a bird that lives freely within a cell?

The perpetual rhythm and timing of life, a sequence of images of the colorful ‘Horny’, the imprisoned goldfinch that climbs eternally up the staircase his breeder’s fingers provide.

A codependent relationship between a prisoner in his cell, and a bird in its cage.