Ιnstallation cobblestones,cement blocks, tree trunks, books, photographs, variable

“And as an uncertain echo to his Skeletons, Manolis Baboussis the architect presents some twenty sculpture-architectures (2021-2022), of stone and metal, wood and books, like a Lego game with infinite possibilities, a game of conflicts between architecture and nature: another type of “Baboucity”. The materials used, all familiar to the artist, represent both nature and culture: Baboussis stages here the permanent conflict that continues to go on between concrete and wood, representing the struggle between the concrete bricks and the branches, symbols of the tree which, although imprisoned in concrete, is still and always the strongest.
But beyond the powerful symbolic content of these sculptures, they also and perhaps above all witness the knowledge and intimate relationship the art-chitect Baboussis has with space: everything is perfectly “right”, in place, the balances are playful, the imbalances well controlled and there emanates from these forms a musicality similar to that of Baboussis’ poetry.
“I continue to play, like a child,” says the artist. “Architects who build for real cannot remain children…” Pushing the game to the point of self-mockery, in which he excels as much as in the criticism of the world, Baboussis uses his own catalogues to support some of his sculptures. The paper of his catalogues, as well as that of a series of “beautiful books” of classical architecture, dance and anatomy, all this paper which comes from trees, gets thus, in a symbolic way, given back to them” ,

Barbara Polla from the catalogue ‘The Garden’

A multifractal and transversal installation that deconstructs the very concept of architecture and restructures, childlike, a rhythmology in space, with natural, artificial and spiritual raw materials, which are in a competitive dialectic and are reinvigorated through their co-location.

Christina Reinhart