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– AKTINA 4 

In the spring of 2024, Manos traveled to Athens to paint Grigoris’ van. The message read “Palestine Tours”, a statement asserting that Palestine cannot be erased from the map.

During his stay, he bunked at Christos’ house, and the two spoke daily about the events in Gaza, feeling deeply affected. They decided to create a series of illustrations that would capture, in a direct way, essential ideas surrounding the issue. They chose a cheap, childlike material, easy to cut and ideal for printing. Manos carved grotesque, ominous, frightening figures into children’s craft sponges. They worked with colored papers, using oil paints for printing. The result was raw, almost impulsive, childlike yet terrifying.

The publication includes selected images from a larger set of prints. Sequentially arranged, the images act as a visual diary — fragmentary, urgent, unrefined — like the emotions that gave birth to it. In the last pages of the book, Grigoris’s poem attempts to give voice to the unfinished narrative.

The cover image, printed on fabric, raises questions, while the creators leave the reader with a short, paraphrased excerpt from George Bataille’s Theory of Religion.

– Short Bio

Reach People (Manos Venieris and Christos Kotsinis) is a creative duo whose work reflects their hearts and minds. They seek to satisfy their senses through visual nonsense while living in a state of general warfare, drawing a distinction between the mental processes of the rational and those of a simple, deranged creator. Their work is never direct, never a simple, one-dimensional message. It is always a question, not an answer. They do not engage in didactic work; instead, they create pieces that pose uncomfortable questions, articulated through cheerful, comic-like characters and images.

→ instagram.com/christoskotsinis
→ instagram.com/manos_venieris