Sea Masonry III

 

Sea Masonry III, 2024
Wood

@callirhoe

 Bloom

 

And If I Fall

There’s this cathedral in my head I keep
making from cricket song and
dying but rogue-in-spirit, still,
bamboo. Not making. I keep
imagining it, as if that were the same
thing as making, and as if making might
bring it back, somehow, the real
cathedral. In anger, as in desire, it was
everything, that cathedral. As if my body
itself cathedral. I conduct my body
with a cathedral’s steadiness, I
try to. I cathedral. In desire. In anger.
Light enters a cathedral the way persuasion fills a body.
Light enters a cathedral, the way persuasion fills a body.

Carl Phillips 

Windows Opened

Windows Opened, 2021

Wood, acrylic paint, string

22 x 18 x 14 cm

 

#facade #building #kostisvelonis #sculpture #models #scaffolding #weight #debate #masonry #escape 

Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making

 

Photographer Unknown, “Construction of the Schindler House using the Slab-Tilt process,” 1922. Courtesy of Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara

 

Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making emphasizes acts of making, unmaking, and remaking carried out by artists, architects, historians, writers, organizers, and cultural practitioners that have constituted the house and its mythos over this century. Designed and built by 1922, the house was in its first instantiation a radical proposition for modern collective dwelling in a minimal existence—a campsite enclosed by concrete, glass, and redwood. But the house was also constantly in flux, painted, carpeted, curtained, dismantled, reconstructed, excavated, and reimagined. The house’s experimental promise, first put forth now one hundred years ago, lives on today. 

 

Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making guides visitors through Schindler’s cooperative dwelling for two couples, built for himself, his wife Pauline, and their friends Clyde and Marian Chace. Each studio hosts a gentle timeline of landscape and property, construction and maintenance, guests (invited and otherwise) and domesticity, and preservation and pedagogy. Thematic topics are uncovered by various contributors, including historical and archival documents from Reyner Banham, Bernard Judge, Esther McCoy, and R.M. Schindler from the collections of the UCSB Architecture & Design Collections, Los Angeles Times, Long Beach Press Telegram, UC Berkeley Collections, UCLA Young Research Library Special Collections, UCLA Department of Architecture & Urban Design, Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Southern California Institute of Architecture Media Archive, Architectural Association Photo Library, and USC Undergraduate Architecture Program. 

Artists and contributors to the exhibition include:

Carmen Argote,Fiona Connor,Julian Hoeber,Kathi Hofer,stephanie mei huang,Andrea Lenardin Madden,Renée Petropoulos,Gala Porras-Kim,Stephen Prina,Jakob Sellaoui, Peter Shire

 

With an emphasis on process over finality, the exhibition incorporates a rotating vitrine which accommodates the display and interpretation of new materials that emerge during the run of the show. Materials on display from the collections of the UCSB Architecture & Design Collections, Los Angeles Times, Long Beach Press Telegram, UCLA Young Research Library Special Collections, UCLA Department of Architecture & Urban Design, Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) collection at the Library of Congress, National Parks Service, Southern California Institute of Architecture Media Archive, Architectural Association Photo Library, and USC Undergraduate Architecture Program will be on view.

The exhibition is complemented by summer-long programming and events including seminars, lectures, reading groups, benefit events, edible performances, in-person curator-led tours, and asynchronous audio tours.

 

 

 

SAT, MAY 28, 2022-  SUN, SEP 25, 2022

 

https://www.makcenter.org/exhibitions/centennial

Midnight Rambler

 

Midnight Rambler, 2021  

Wood, concrete, clay, modelling clay, acrylic paint, pencil, gesso  

  35 cm x 46 cm x 40 cm 

Scaffold Services

 

Scaffold Services, 2022   
Cement, wood, ceramic, gesso, stucco  
28 x 30x 13 cm 

Slapstick Masonry

Midnight Rambler, 2021  

Wood, concrete, clay, modelling clay, acrylic paint, pencil, gesso    

 35 cm x 46 cm x 40 cm 

 

 

  

The slapstick or, as originally referred to in the Italian commedia dell’arte, the batacchio, was used as a theatrical prop consisted of two thin wooden planks that produced a 'slapping' sound when one comedian would slap another. The slapping gesture on the face would become synchronized with the sound of two thin planks slapping each other thus transforming an inanimate, soulless object into an animated sound-producing prop. If movement is a necessary condition for any living organism (Latin for anima) the thin slapstick boards here obtain an animated, living role. In the world of physical comedies, this movement is driven by the logic of action and reaction, while the sound is dry and noisy. Sculpturally speaking, the straight long narrow boards-slats with the strong blows, do not have the plasticity of other shapes. But from a technical point of view, they present animistic characteristics since they produce sound and have an open and close structure. The theatrical batacchio, the only one of its kind in this specific type of theatre, therefore impersonates a function which is acted twice; on stage and backstage.  

 

In the exhibition 'Slapstick Masonry', the batacchio is appropriated through a series of large-scale slapstick sculptures accompanied by other more sculptural and lyrical works that pay tribute to conditions that lead to stumbling events and changeable situations, as much so as in American silent film comedies. These sculptures are reminiscent of clumsy, fleeting narratives similar to a staggering sleepwalker, a shaky scaffolding or a couple splitting up. In other cases, the sculptures portray ideas with seemingly opposite relationships. One work describes the mechanism of thought based on the rotating functions of a circus, while another compares the genius persona of Luci Ball to a rough catapult throwing balls and boulders. “Buster Keaton Daydreaming” is embedded in two stones that look to the south. In another, a pile of bricks and other materials, reveal the contradictory emergence of flowers through dense masonry. The slapping batacchio is revealed to us, not only as a hidden, multi-functioning, performative prop but primarily as a liberated albeit clumsy object that causes blunders in its attempt to become autonomous. 

Slapstick Masonry  

Opening Thursday 3rd of February @monitorgallery in Lisbon 

 6-9 pm  

https://www.monitoronline.org/lisbon/  

#slapstick #masonry #slapstickmasonry#kostisvelonis #sculpture #performingarts #midnightrambler #prefabricated #house #batacchio #monitorgallery #monitorlisbon #lisbon  

 

The Cares of a Union Man

The Cares of a Union Man, 2021

Stone, clay, straw, cement, dirt, seeds, wood, soil

 

#Die SorgedesHausvaters #thecaresofafamilyman #odradek #kostisvelonis #masonry #builder #sculpture #Gaia #chthonic #thecaresofafamilyman#franzkafka #sienaartinstitute

 

Masonry for Blossoms

 

Masonry for Blossoms, 2019
Ceramics, wood, acrylic, oil 

#sculpture #masonry #blossoms#kostisvelonis #building

Indestructible ( broken)

Indestructible (broken), 2020 

Marble, wood, stones 

199

#Destefoundation, #gravity #masonry#petrification  #sculpture #kostisvelonis #hydra #hydraslaughterhouse,# exhibition #199 

 

199

199
DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra
Until 1 November 

#199 #sculpture #hydra #island #deste#destefoundation #kostisvelonis #indestructible#broken #stones #petrification #joints #weight#marble #hydraslaughterhouse #masonry#exhibition — at Hydra Island Greece.

199

199, Hydra Slaughterhouse until November 1
Deste Foundation/ National Historical Museum of Athens
#funerary #masks #destefoundation#nhmuseumofathens #collection #brass#sculpture #kostisvelonis #fighters#greekrevolution #filikietairia #hydra #199 — at Hydra Island Greece.

Receiver

Receiver, 2020
Cypress trees 

#deste #cypress #trees #kostisvelonis #destefoundation #hydra #exhibition#receiver #hydraslaughterhouse

Hyperion Has Stumbled

Hyperion Has Stumbled (detail), 2018 

When you daydream while walking—and, with your eyes set on the sky, you find that evidently you are not Hyperion, celebrated by Hölderlin in his writings, who lingers above earth—it is easy to stumble. Yet the daydreamer’s clash with reality is from another perspective a creative or even an insightful encounter, and one of the ideal media that causes people to fall over obstacles is sculpture. In this lecture, I will argue for a conceptual shift from the celebrated dexterity of the hand to the despised clumsiness of the leg. I will share samples of my work that stick to and never leave the ground. These works confirm the close dependency of sculpture on an onerous and yet surprisingly generative reality.

Location: Scheide Caldwell House
Title: Hyperion Has Stumbled
Speaker: Kostis Velonis (Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellow)
Respondent: Mitra Abbaspour, (Princeton University Art Museum)
Time: 1:30 p.m.

December 7 at Princeton University

Measuring the Distance to the Goal

Measuring the Distance to the Goal, 2018 

Wood, concrete, acrylic 

123 x 26 x 16 cm 

Square the Block

Square the Block (2009) is a major architectural intervention, which has been installed on the corner of one of the London School of Economics’ most prominent buildings. The sculpture appears to an abstraction of the corner that both mimics and subtly subverts the existing façade of the building. The stonework looks as if it has been jumbled and crumpled up, then just reattached to the building. It deliberately upsets the perception of the building from something quietly solid and dignified into something unsettling and fallible.

The corner of the building was actually originally chamfered, this allowed Richald Wilson to construct elements that projected from it. Then to construct the artwork, the artist, working with engineers Eckersley O’Callaghan, created copies of a number five-storey vertical slices from the neighbouring buildings. Moulds were taken from these and the resultant casting fixed to a three-dimensional aluminium truss , which was six storeys in height and approximately triangular. The pieces of the sculpture were constructed from a water-based acrylic composite: Jesmonite. This was selected because it was economical to produce, light enough to be carried by the existing building structure and had a close visual match to the Portland stone cladding. The completed sculpture assembled on the ground and the complete piece lifted into place. It was hung on the side of the building from the fifth floor only and tied back to the building at second and sixth floors for stability.

The sculpture makes no architectural and functional sense other than matching the cornice work and completing the corner. Its position means that it is sometimes unnoticed, overlooked and therefore the moment of incongruity and recognition is often delayed and thus amplified. It is an intervention that both mimics and subtly subverts the existing facade of the building.

http://www.msa.mmu.ac.uk/continuity/

Circus Aedificare

Circus Aedificare is a construction machine that pours a free and unorganized matter around it. The ritual spilling of matter accumulates to the point of constituting an enclosure around it, made of a pure and anarchic accumulation. This absence of constructive economy has for counterpart to obtain an architecture which is exchanged with the field of Painting or Sculpture. In the idea of synthesis of arts, this building succeeded to move the painting dripping method in the field of Architecture. By withdrawing from construction knowledge, it is the density of the material itself that gives shape to the building and its natural distribution.

http://www.marcleschelier.com/circus-aedificare  

State of Suspense

State of Suspense, 2017 

Wood, acrylic, felt, oil 
10 x 5 x 4 cm

You Glow in my Heart like the Flames of Uncounted Candles

You Glow in my Heart like the Flames of

Uncounted Candles, 2017 

Cement, wood, plywood, paper, acrylic, oil, watercolour 

136 x 45 x 36 

You Glow in my Heart like the Flames of Uncounted Candles

You Glow in my Heart like the Flames of

Uncounted Candles, 2017 

Cement, wood, plywood, paper, acrylic, oil, watercolour

136 x 45 x 36