Something Will Happen

Something Will Happen, 2024 

Wood, chalk paint , plasticine

50x 17x 19 cm

Bókumbók

@Amanda_riffo @Katerinabotsari1, Kostis Velonis, Yannis Skaltsas, curated by Katerina Spathi @katerina_rina_na

HEAD2HEAD festival taking place in Reykjavík on the 11th, 12th and 13th of October 2024@h2h_reykjavik

The participating artists & curators are: Amanda Riffo, Brák Jónsdóttir, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Despina Charitonidi, Eiríkur Páll Sveinsson, Eleni Tsopotou, Fanis Kafantaris, Florent Frizet, Helgi Valdimarsson, Hlökk Þrastardóttir, Hugo LIanes, Ívar Ölmu, Jo Pawłowska in collaboration with Sasa Lubinska, Katerina Botsari, Katrín Inga Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir, Konstantinos Lianos, Kosmas Nikolaou, Maaike Stutterheim, Paky Vlassopoulou, Sofia Kouloukouri, Theo Prodromidis, Unnar Örn, Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis (VASKOS) curated by Christina Petkopoulou, Yorgos Yatromanolakis, Yiannis Skaltsas, Kostis Velonis and Zoe Hatziyannaki.

ABOUT HEAD2HEAD

The bilateral exhibition project HEAD2HEAD connects the two dynamic and ever-expanding visual art scenes of Athens and Reykjavik. The project aspires to connect artists and artist-run venues in both cities, building bridges and networks through an artistic dialogue and exhibition exchange. The driving force of these two art scenes is their artist-run community. Both Athens and Reykjavík foster an astounding amount of artist-run initiatives and exhibition spaces that fuel their dynamic and vibrant art scenes; this distinct culture is not typical in a global context and deserves to be celebrated. Thus, the independent platform of A-DASH (GR) is teaming up with the 21-year-old artist-run exhibition space Kling&Bang (ICE) to connect the two artist-run scenes and create this bilateral-exhibition project, connecting and strengthening the relationships between the two cities and their art scenes.

The spaces taking part are: Associate Gallery, Gallery Kannski, Kling & Bang, The Living Art museum, OPEN house in the Nordic House, Phenomenon Artist studio Complex and Gallery, Gallery Underpass and the brand-new space Bókumbók.

 

Seaside Wheel

Seaside Wheel, 2024
Wood, plywood, acrylic, chalk paint, colour paper, colour pencil
167 x 69 x 29 cm

The Doctor Is In

Psychiatric Help/ The Doctor Is In

#freudmuseum #DoctorZeus

Vessel performance

Vessel performance, 2024
144 x 23 x 44 cm / 56 x 20 x 23
Wood, plaster, clay, gesso, acrylic, oil 

My Star

 Paul Klee

The Gravity of the Sun

Divergence of the Sun (Solar Politics in Labour Practice), 2023-24 

Wood, metal, acrylic, oil 

130 x 110 x 29 cm

«Whispers and microhistories between the bastions»

Φρούριο του Νιόκαστρου, Ναβαρίνο

Curated by : Stella Christofi

with:
Stella Christofi, Maria Glyka, Antonis Kanellos, Konstantinos Lianos, Valia Papachristou, Hara Piperidou, Marios Stamatis, Kostis Stafylakis, The Callas, Dimitris Trikas, Marina Velisioti, Kostis Velonis, Evgenia Vereli, Vasilis Vlastaras, Poka Yio 

20/7-28/7/2024

#kostisvelonis #sun #φρούριο #fortress #Pylos #ΝιόκαστροΝαυαρίνου# #NewCastleofPylos#politics#labour #sculpture #puppetry#solarpolitics

Dry Dreams on the Sea Floor

 

     

Dry Dreams on the Sea Floor, 2024 

Plastic, polysterene, polypropylene, rope, iron, fabric, acrylic, oil

@perasmaistanbul

“All Things Become Islands Before My Senses” 

#kostisvelonis #sea #seafloor #dry #dreams #precarious #dwelling 

Life Otherwise at the Sea's Edge

As part of a longer project on sea edges and coloniality, this essay studies ways of being that exceed the human, nonhuman, and colonial divide, and that find historical nodes of power and affective density at the boundaries of the Americas oceanic.[1] It does so by 

thinking with and alongside the work of environmentalist and writer Rachel Carson and multimedia mestiza artist Cecilia Vicuña to find sources for ecological feeling, connectivity, and praxis across the hemisphere. Their views have shaped my own understanding of ecological memories and how the surround has shaped a way of being and living at the sea’s edge. 

In the midst of the Anthropocene’s destructiveness, how can we theorize sea edges as places of coloniality, conquest, encounter, financial speculation, yet also as sites of hidden imaginaries and potentiality, and even sites of ongoing resource resurgence and individual and collective resilience?[2] What can we take from Rachel Carson’s view despite knowing it is steeped in the settler logic and scientific gaze of Western domination of the natural world? How does Cecilia Vicuña’s visual art and performance offer a form of decolonial play that exposes extractive capitalism and also finds sources for living otherwise? Thinking from the liminal and harsh pounding spaces of the sea’s edge is one way to consider the beautiful and terrible current condition of planetary existence. Attuning our attention to a historical grounding of place and to the global ecologies of the sea is requisite for producing action and for unspinning the network of colonial-capital relations. Rachel Carson peers into tidepool communities and is able to name the fragile and resilient condition that exists at the sea’s edge. Yet without Cecilia Vicuña’s attention to the Global South, to extractive industries, and to the buried and omitted Indigenous histories in the Americas, we risk reproducing our fascination with the ocean and its sea edge without a tethered sense of the colonial Anthropocene. Both of their forms of encounter and observation have profoundly influenced the sea edge epistemology I begin to outline here.[3] 

Text by Macarena Gómez-Barris

OPEN RIVERS / ISSUE THIRTEEN: SPRING 2019 

https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/life-otherwise-at-the-seas-edge/

Damfino (Chorus of the Breezes)

Damfino (Chorus of the Breezes), 2024 

Wood, marine plywood, rusty iron, acrylic, oil 

“Things Become Islands Before My Senses” presented by @perasmaistanbul

#kostisvelonis #sculpture #vagabondobjects #breezes #slapstick #damnifiknow #environmentalslapstick

My Wonderful World of Slapstick

Keaton, Buster & Samuels Charles. My Wonderful World of Slapstick , New York : Doubleday, 1960.

https://archive.org/details/mywonderfulworld00bust/mode/2up

Salty Mountain

Salty Mountain, 2024

Plywood, wood, acrylic 

"Things Become Islands Before My Senses”

 presented by @perasmaistanbul

#floating #salty #mountain #vagabondobjects #sculpture #kostisvelonis #environmentalsculpture

The Jewel

There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.

James Wright 

Bucket Full of Blues

Bucket Full of Blues, 2024

Fiberglass, wood, marine plywood, plastic bucket

 

The World Turned Upside Down Buster Keaton, Sculpture and the Absurd

Still from One Week, 1920. Courtesy Park Circus

In 1920, Buster Keaton released his first solo film, One Week, at around the same time as Duchamp was working on The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Batchelors, Even). One Week uses beautifully executed visual jokes to tell the story of a man’s doomed attempts to build a flat-pack house—the utopian modernist readymade—for his bride. Keaton not only performed his own stunts; he also designed the mechanics by which the scenes were created, along the way inventing shots and editing sequences that have now become the accepted syntax of cinema. Viewed shot by shot, these scenes undermine certainties about the world we inhabit and represent the inevitability of failure when we try to exert control.

Curated by Simon Faithfull and Ben Roberts, The World Turned Upside Down, places the work of over twenty international artists working in film, sculpture, installation art and performance in direct relation to Buster Keaton’s films to track a lineage from the melancholic and at times anarchic comedy of Keaton to the dry wit of conceptual practice. By examining Keaton’s approach to art through making—the processes of repetition, failure and risk—the exhibition also establishes a nuanced presentation of the developmental relationship between slapstick film, sculpture and performance and highlights parallels within modern and contemporary sculptural practice which continue to resonate today.

The exhibition features work of conceptual artists working in film, photography, sculpture, installation art and performance; by historical and contemporary, established and emerging artists. These include Bas Jan Ader, Marcel Broodthaers, Alexandre da Cunha, Simon Faithfull, Fischli  Weiss, Brian Griffiths, Emma Hart, Jeppe Hein, Sofia Hultén, Tehching Hsieh, Gordon Matta-Clark, Hayley Newman, Miranda Pennell, Ruth Proctor, Roman Signer, William Wegman, Richard Wentworth, Richard Wilson, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Ben Woodeson and Erwin Wurm. The associated events programme features performances by Angus Braithwaite, Andy Holden, Jefford Horrigan, Ruth Proctor and William Hunt.

The World Turned Upside Down places the work of these artists in direct relation to three of Keaton’s early films: The Boat, The Cameraman and One Week, which will be continuously played throughout the exhibition. Through the plotting of these connections, the exhibition establishes a nuanced presentation of slapstick and the developmental relationship between sculpture and performance.

The World Turned Upside Down is a Mead Gallery exhibition which has been supported by The Henry Moore Foundation.

Warwick Arts Centre
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL

www.meadgallery.co.uk

Alongside the exhibition there are a number of events running throughout the season. Events include:

Exhibition tours
Join Fiona Venables, Assistant Curator, for a 30-minute introduction to The World Turned Upside Down. The exhibition tours are free but places are limited so please book ahead by calling the Box Office.

Fail Better – Deconstructing Buster Keaton
Warwick Arts Centre hosts a packed two days of artists’ performances, film screenings and talks to coincide with The World Turned Upside Down. Contributors include Angus Braithwaite, Simon Faithfull, Andy Holden, Jefford Horrigan, William Hunt and Ruth Proctor.

The Clumsy Boat

"The Boat" is a classic silent comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton, released in 1921. The film follows Keaton's character and his family's escapades aboard a small homemade boat. Drawing inspiration from themes and motifs in Keaton's silent short film, Kostis Velonis' "Fragile Ship Adrift" series informs his work across sculpture, installations, drawings, and ephemeral events, serving as a metaphor for the human condition. It explores individuals' navigation of life's unpredictable seas, often feeling vulnerable and adrift. The juxtaposition of the ship's precarious situation with moments of humor and slapstick underscores the irony and absurdity inherent in human existence. In "The Boat," Keaton navigates a series of comedic mishaps and perilous situations aboard a small vessel, highlighting the fragility of human endeavor against nature's vast and unpredictable forces. Similarly, the "Fragile Ship Adrift" series delves into themes of resilience, determination, and the absurdity of human striving in the face of adversity. The second body of works, "Fair Winds and Following Seas," features a 2024 sculpture crafted from marine plywood. This piece embodies the essence of the nautical phrase 'Fair Winds and Following Seas, which originates from two distinct sources and is universally embraced as a maritime blessing, wishing travelers a safe and fortunate voyage. 'Fair winds' symbolize the blessing of favorable breezes guiding one's journey homeward, while 'following seas' signifies the supportive currents propelling one toward their intended destination. This sculpture encapsulates the optimism and hope inherent in these phrases, celebrating the guidance and support we seek in our life's journeys.

callirrhoe_BLOOM 

Courtesy the artist and Kalfayan Gallery Collaboration with Callirrhoë Commissioned by OCEANIC PRO #KostisVelonis #BLOOM #callirrhoeathens

Sea Masonry III

 

Sea Masonry III, 2024
Wood

@callirhoe

 Bloom

 

‘Or Words to That Effect’:The Antimetaphysics of Slapstick

Antimetaphysical slapstick–as a figure of thought–draws on the traditions of the theatric and cinematic slapstick as well as on the postulates and thought structures of a philosophy of difference dating back to the formation of post-modern or poststructuralist theory. The antimetaphysical variety of slapstick, outlined in this chapter, develops first from within the traditional concept of body-related comedy and subsequently intersects with a number of other forms of comedy and the comedic. Notably, subtleties of distinction between comedy genres such as satire, parody, farce, or travesty do not play a role here, as the focus is on the use of specific operations and techniques that are traditionally attributed to slapstick and can even be found in the discourses of poststruc-turalism and postmodernism (sense, nonsense, repetition, seriality). Drawing particularly on Gilles Deleuze’s treatiseLogique du sens[The Logic of Sense,1969], this chapter examines to what extent these techniques yield the construct of an antimetaphysical variant of slapstick which is no longer driven by a metaphysical desire to get to the bottom of things, and which is fundamentally independent from genre. Instead, the question of how the comedic is produced, i.e.,constructed through comic operations is discussed in detail using the example of German dramatist Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s comic plays. On the one hand, this leads to a novel reading of Hildesheimer’s early theater that outlines the structure and special features of antimetaphysical slapstick. On the other hand, it results in an original contribution that refines the overall definition of slapstick.

Hron, Irina. "‘Or Words to That Effect’: The Antimetaphysics of Slapstick". Slapstick: An Interdisciplinary Companion, edited by Ervin Malakaj and Alena E. Lyons, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021, pp. 269-292. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110571981-017

Sea Voyeurism (Buster Keaton’s Boat)

Sea Voyeurism (Buster Keaton’s Boat) 2024

Marine plywood, fiberglass, iron putty, polyester spray filler, wood