Friday, September 29, 2017

A Puppet Sun




NEON invites you to the opening of the site-specific installation A Puppet Sun by Athens-based artist Kostis Velonis, curated by Vassilis Oikonomopoulos as part of CITY PROJECT 2017.


NEON activates a neoclassical residence at Kaplanon 11, Athens, by commissioning the new installation of Kostis Velonis. The artist conceived A Puppet Sun especially for the site of Kaplanon 11, responding to its history, architecture and position in the heart of the city. The neoclassical residence, constructed in 1891 is a unique architectural example and one of the last remaining buildings of its kind in Athens. Narrated in such an extraordinary space, Velonis’ work addresses the site’s lived experience and memory, investigating the powerful historical, political and cultural intersections as well as personal narratives that are present. The neoclassical residence, constructed in 1981 is a unique architectural example and one of the last remaining buildings of its kind in Athens.
CITY PROJECT is an initiative for public art and the city, conceived and commissioned annually by NEON. NEON aims to activate public and historical places through contemporary art, contributing to the interaction of art, society and the city. This new commission by NEON is the largest-scale solo presentation of Velonis’ work to date.
Curator | Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Assistant Curator, Collections International Art, Tate Modern


OPENING | CITY PROJECT | A PUPPET SUN | KOSTIS VELONIS
11/10/2017 19:00 - 23:00 
Kaplanon 11, Kolonaki
Free Entrance
OPENING
11 October 2017, 7pm
OPENING HOURS
Wednesday – Sunday | 12.00 – 20.00

http://neon.org.gr/en/event/opening-city-project-puppet-sun-kostis-velonis/



Monday, September 25, 2017

Mirror of the Witch



Miroir de sorcière
Bois et verre
2,5 x 31,5 cm
Collection Andre Breton

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


William Butler Yeats, 1928

Διπλό Παραμύθι





Ελένη Ζούζουλα, Διπλό Παραμύθι, Ο Παρεξηγημένος γιατρός, Λευκή βιβλιοθήκη, Αθήνα : 1934

Monday, September 11, 2017

Liquid Antiquity: A New Fold


This workshop engages scholars, curators, and artists in a response to the multimedia project “Liquid Antiquity,” commissioned by the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, in order to extend further its explorations of alternative models of engaging classical antiquity and to enrich collaboration between the academic and art worlds in new forms of public engagement around the legacies of classicism.

Liquid Antiquity,” is a platform for radically rethinking the relationship between the classical and the contemporary. Antiquity is an irrepressible source of meaning today. But what it means is never fixed in stone. It must instead be continually rethought for an always changing “we” under always changing conditions of local and global significance. Resisting classicism as dead weight, “Liquid Antiquity” aims to make the ancient Greek past available as a fluid resource for the present by shifting attention from the matter of antiquity to the question of why antiquity matters. “Liquid Antiquity” was therefore designed as an exhibition without antiquities that stakes out the book as its primary site. Through word and image, the book stages an encounter with a “liquid” antiquity as well as a series of reflections on this encounter through contemporary artistic practice and the history of classicism over millennia. Spanning twenty-five hundred years in an unprecedented collaboration between leading artists, theorists, writers, art historians, classicists, cultural historians, and archaeologists, “Liquid Antiquity” is a handbook, deeply collaborative in spirit and experimental in form, for the creative work of reimagining the present through the ancient past.  It is complemented by a video installation designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro on view in the antiquities galleries at the Benaki Museum in Athens.
Liquid Antiquity: A New Fold” is inspired by two guiding commitments of the initial project: first, the commitment to collaboration and conversation; and second, the commitment to a way forward that is always unpredictably emergent out of the past—hence, the idea of a fold introduced here. An interdisciplinary group of scholars and artists are invited to reflect on “Liquid Antiquity” and think together about strategies—conceptual, aesthetic, pragmatic—for the ongoing work of “doing” classical reception under the sign of liquidity.  Time will be primarily devoted to discussion rather than formal presentation.
Liquid Antiquity: A New Fold” is organized by Dimitri Gondicas (Princeton Athens Center), Brooke Holmes (Princeton/Postclassicisms), and Polina Kosmadaki (Benaki Museum) and supported by the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies and Postclassicisms.
Confirmed participants:
Joy Connolly (The Graduate Center at CUNY)
Richard Fletcher (Ohio State University)
Phoebe Giannisi (University of Thessaly)
Constanze Güthenke (Oxford University)
Brooke Holmes (Princeton University)
Despina Katapoti (University of the Aegean)
Polina Kosmadaki (Benaki Museum)
Christodoulos Panayiotou (Independent Artist)
Nina Papaconstantinou (Independent Artist)
Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Princeton University)
Stefania Strouza (Independent Artist)
Giorgos Tzirtzilakis (University of Thessaly/DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art)
Kostis Velonis (Independent Artist)

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Οι ροβινσώνες και ο βασιληάς τους





Ελένη Ζούζουλα, Οι ροβινσώνες και ο βασιληάς τους, εικονογράφηση Τ.Λουκίδη, Λευκή βιβλιοθήκη, 1935

Exhibition House by Gregory Ain





Exhibition House by Gregory Ain
May 17–October 29, 1950
The Museum of Modern Art