[Winter 2026]
The Collectors
by Karen Henry
[EXCERPT]
The history of art is peppered with images of patrons, whether it’s the Medicis of the Renaissance, the guilds of the seventeenth century, or the Guggenheims of the twentieth century. The portraits in Christos Dikeakos’s series The Collectors contribute to and acknowledge this lineage. In his densely packed and finely detailed pictures, the objects are characters as much as the people are. The exhibition of thirty-seven images at Griffin Art Projects included fourteen portraits of private collectors and complicated the definition of collecting by including multiple layers of the art economy, from artists in their studios through markets to collectors and ultimately to museums, all of which are involved in accumulating and circulating objects that come to define culture. Dikeakos’s work is rooted in these entangled relationships as they are manifested on the west coast of Canada.
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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 131 – Collecting ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: The Collectors]
Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, Christos Dikeakos received a BFA at the University of British Columbia in 1970. Working primarily in photography, he has contributed to the development of photoconceptualism in Vancouver. His works have been exhibited throughout Canada and internationally and are held in public collections such as the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
www.christosdikeakos.ca
Karen Henry is a writer, editor, curator and art consultant based in Vancouver.