The
world turn'd upside down: or, A briefe description of the ridiculous
fashions of these distracted times
by T. J., Taylor, John ,
Jordan, Thomas,
London: Printed for John Smith, Jan 28 1646.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Fever of the Antique
Despair Island (Pleasure
of Curve) 2013, ceramic, plaster, wood, 100x15x14cm
The systematic excavations implemented under the shadow of the ideas of neoclassicism and romanticism by the archaeological schools of the emerging European nation states, brought to light numerous, yet unseen, fragments of earlier cultures. The condition of the findings, despite the deterioration and the elliptical quality of the figures, was idealized and influenced the Western perceptibility. It configured, not only a visual model but also an ideological, ethical and aesthetical legacy. What until then had only been slightly discernible, was eventually embedded in the Western Canon of modernity: the aesthetics of the fragment, the poetics of elliptical narration, concealment, repulsion and hint; and in dialectical contradiction, the logic of the archive (as a substitution for the incoherently structured –early colonial– cabinet of curiosities), the need for recalling, narrating and putting in order an already existing material, the retrospective attribution of meaning.
Fever of the antique associates the poetics of fragmentation with the sense of detachment experienced by modern subjects; the dematerialisation of the present and the urge to constantly interpret the elusive past, constitute the subject of exploration by the artistic practices, which are woven together in the curatorial project. The exhibition, above all, seeks to remind the need for tracing the path towards the principle of reality and encourages an embedded perspective as a prop, which will provide the foundation for the lessening of the local identity’s precarious correlations. Finally, Fever of the antique addresses a positioning beyond antiquity’s continuous recurrence (i.e. out of the power of the precedent), testing the symmetries between the present and the past.
Curated by Evangelia Ledaki
Artists: Paki Vlassopoulou, Kostis Velonis, Efthimis Theou/Electra Angelopoulou/Anthi Efstratiadou, Lizi Kalliga, Alexandros Laios, Kostas Bassanos, Yiannis Papadopoulos, Nina Papaconstantinou, Dimitris Foutris, Kostas Christopoulos
FEVER OF THE ANTIQUE Association of Greek Archaeologists
2-21.6.2014
feveroftheantique.thearcadesproject.gr
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Sadness, be gone!
As mathematicians meet in New York to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Dürer's print Melencolia, Karl Galle asks whether it is a depiction of despairing genius or of scholarly optimism
This is Not My Beautiful House
Anastasia Ax
Apostolos Georgiou
Borrowing its title from the lyrics of the famous song by Talking Heads, the exhibition This is Not My Beautiful House will bring together four artists: Anastasia Ax, Apostolos Georgiou, Socratis Socratous and Kostis Velonis, who are engaged, directly or indirectly, with the present ‘Greek’ – not to say global – condition.
The
everyday here in Greece seems like a leaky vessel. And while the
water level is dropping, ideas on how to survive in the
post-capitalism desert do not come easily. The scenario is pretty
ruthless, yet life seems to go on, seeking its best outcome, under
the warm sun.
As
we are experiencing this period of change, where everything is in
flux, the space loses its shape and transforms into nothingness.
Athens reveals itself as a utopian place: a space for the impossible
and for ‘everything that is possible’. Amidst all these we find
ourselves in limbo. Unaccustomed to the speed of change as well as to
the density of events that occur in multiple layers all at once we
become alien to all our own given assumptions.
In
terms of the best of the worse, the daily routine is not the daily
routine we knew anymore; the city is not the city we knew anymore;
the politics are not the politics we can recognise anymore; our
belongings do not belong to us anymore; and the public space does not
belong to us either, although private space is negotiable, if there
still is one. We are an entity in transfer, a country on sale, in
which nothing is familiar anymore. We are living through a rapture.
This
is Not My Beautiful House
as a title has no direct references to 80s pop music or New York
culture. In the absence of any other significant manifestos, it
serves as the perfect tag to describe a world that is unfolding
between fears and desires stigmatised by the current economic and
social moment. As a line from a pop song, this quote has surely been
interpreted and felt in many different ways by many different people.
In the case of this exhibition, it becomes a parable for the
contemporary state of social and existential alienation. This
is Not My Beautiful House
refers here to contradictory notions and desires like going or
staying, living or dying, trying or surrendering, hoping or giving
up; a topography in which the only certainty is that things cannot go
on anymore as they were.
Kunsthalle
Athena chooses to focus this year once more on Greek artists. With
the exception of Anastasia Ax, who is an artist with duel houses and
duel exiles, and vividly experiences the Greek situation via family
and relatives, the other artists insist on living in Athens, despite
the difficult situation and the fact that their international careers
might have provided them with a way to leave.
Participants
: Anastasia Ax, Apostolos Georgiou, Socratis Socratous and Kostis
Velonis
Kunsthalle
Athena
May
16 - September 11, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Michel Serres: Latour Educates a Naive Michel Serres
Michel Serres: Latour Educates a Naive Michel Serres: This essay titled The Englightenment Without the Critique: A Word on Michel Serres' Philosophy showed a while back as a Google Alert. …
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is the first part of the large scale exhibition This
Is A Historic Opportunity For Us
(title taken from Antonis Pittas’ work). The idea of this
exhibition came up as an internal need and an immediate response to
the socio-political crisis that Greece has been through since 2009 as
it is one of the first European countries to confront the aftermath
of the global crisis. This Is A Historic Opportunity For Us is a
project that has been designed since 2012 aiming to find the
appropriate venue to host the exhibition in a European metropolitan
city.
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refers to socio-political conditions with connections to political
history and our perception regarding historical knowledge. Through
the works, the viewer “reads” a concrete political meaning that
depends upon the dialectic of individuality and collectivity at play
within a social system. They conjure up a universe of individual
worlds that invoke contemporary awareness and use it as a prism
through which to look upon how we experience reality. The artists
explore areas where there are no rigid distinctions between theory
and practice; where the boundaries between the two seem to blur.
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questions the ways in which the past is conceptually and contextually
reoriented towards the future. As a great number of contemporary
philosophers argue “prior” is the new “after” and the notion
of time transforms accordingly to continuous changes of social
conditions. The viewer faces an up-to-date historical record of art
that confronts the future as the present, art that talks about the
future with works, created the last five years and function as
knowledge tools to understand the present by reflecting it to the
future.
The
works suggest different readings and interpretations that aim to
provoke the viewer’s perception regarding global sociological
issues that affects one’s perception and individual participation
to a collective “status quo”.
Curated
by Ileana Tounta, Dimitrios Antonitsis and Katerina Nikou
Participating
artists :Dimitris Andreadis, Kostas Bassanos, Kostas Christopoulos,
Panos Famelis, Dimitris Foutris, Pavlos Fysakis, Christina
Koutsospyrou & Aran Hughes, Irini Miga, Fryni Mouzakitou,
Alexandros Papathanasiou, Theo Prodromidis, Kostas Sahpazis, Eva
Stefani, Dimitris Tsoumplekas, Kostis Velonis
8 May 2014- 21 June 2014.
The
Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center http://www.art-tounta.gr
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