Josh Garrick unveils 22 new works at Henao Center

Four years after its first trip around the world, Josh Garrick’s unique take on sculpture is coming home again. And this time it’s coming with a special guest, the exotic curator who helped launch a booming art career on the other side of the globe.

The exhibition that will open under the spotlights of the Henao Contemporary Center on Saturday night brings back some well-known antiquities in unusual form.

“Classicism from Two Continents” opens with an artist reception from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 1 at the Henao Contemporary Center, 5601 Edgewater Drive in Orlando. Call 407-272-0317 for more information.

Like Garrick’s previous works displayed in Athens, Istanbul, Brussels, New York and beyond, it’s three dimensions and three millennia of decayed marble, captured in two-dimensional photographs with the far more modern artistic technique of printing on brushed aluminum. The result is an eye-catching three-dimensional effect as the photographs transform once more by the viewer’s perception. It’s the smoldering beauty of Greece captured, and adored, from a uniquely American perspective.

“It’s as if the sculpture breathes,” special guest curator Iris Kritikou said of Garrick’s photo of the rippling back of the Greek god Zeus. “He shows you that those sculptors created these as if they were still alive. He’s saving forever somebody who is not there anymore.”

It had gained some interest in Orlando by late 2012; little did Garrick know he needed to catch the eye of the right Greek. The right Greek was Kritikou. The “right place at the right time” would come during a full-fledged economic disaster on the far side of the Atlantic.

The financial crisis and fears of European Union exodus had put art on the back burner in the land of Apollo. And ever since the near-default, the crisis hasn’t let up.

“I’m based in a country that at this time has no money to invest in culture,” Kritikou said. “There’s very few of us [curators] who are active.”

Once Kritikou saw the potential for a cross-cultural olive branch, she knew she had to make Garrick into the man who showed the old world its modern face, reflected in shiny metal. She’s the curator who jumped Garrick from the little known Orlando art scene onto the white marble stage of Athens’ National Archaeological Museum in September of 2013.

Garrick said there’s a perfect set of lyrics for it. Kritikou knows them, because Garrick sang them to her.

“All the dreams I’ve abandoned, you said they could come true.”

Kritikou may not be as well known in American art circles, but she’s a star in the EU’s blue circle of stars. The compellingly ambitious art champion has represented hundreds of artists by her last count, from Athens to Shanghai. The land of Mickey Mouse may seem a bit far afield from cities that have been developing art scenes since before Jesus, but a chance viewing between a Kritikou and a mutual friend made Garrick’s place in Greece’s most prestigious museum seem all too perfectly right.

Fast forward three years, across exhibitions as far flung as the gateway to the Middle East and an exhibition on Pompeii in Toronto and Garrick’s work is coming right back home again.

“We’ve been on this three-year journey that simply has not stopped,” Garrick said.

The journey will pause on Edgewater Drive for “Classicism from Two Continents.” Works that once wowed on the island of Santorini in a converted tomato processing factory will shine under the lights of a repurposed auto repair garage.

That relaxed framing of a seemingly white collar event is a bit of European culture Kritikou hopes to bring to America, something she’s seen missing from the local arts scene.

“In Greece, people have no money, but love to go to shows, galleries, exhibitions,” she said. “In London, you have [the unemployed] who can still go to the Tate (museum). They see the museum as a recreation park. Here it’s the opposite. You have money, but don’t go to shows. But this is how it starts, to feel as if it belongs to you. I’ve been fighting for this all my life and I still do.”

So when the doors swing open on the free show Saturday night, she’s hoping it’ll be more than the usual crowd.

And it’s not just Garrick’s photos this time around.

The show’s twist is a row of 13 sculptures staring down Garrick’s aluminum prints from a few feet away, 11 created by Florida artists, including Peter Forster and Jim Casey. Two works will come all the way from Greece, including one by Marios Voutsinas, the mutual friend of Garrick and Kritikou who made it all happen.

The final rush is now until Saturday, as the Henao Center hangs the last few pieces before founder Jose Henao hits the switch, the crowd pours in and the wine pours out. Twenty-two never-before-seen works will be on display. Well, they have been seen by one person, this exhibition’s honorary curator.

“When she can look at me and say ‘wow,’ you know it’s going to be big,” Garrick said.

A few days after the big opening night, Kritikou will already be back in her home country, opening two more exhibitions within the span of a week. But she’s hoping she’ll already have left another success story in her wake.