Back to Athens 2022 | Curatorial presentations, Installations
↑ Photos as displayed: (Cover) «Perestroyka» Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva / «Interference» Miriam Laussegger / «No apocalypse now» Michalis Argyrou / «Obey», Nikos Artemis / «POTENTIAL» Ellie Antoniou, curated by Odette Kouzou / «Exit Athena» Selma Köran, curated by Olympia Tzortzi, Callirrhoë / «Home -004-» Paolo Incarnato, curated by Stratis Pantazis / «Caryatid pin-up» Nikos Giavropoulos / «We’re only interesting», curated by Dimitri Yin, Phoenix Athens / «wonder is the beginning of wisdom», Ioanna Lin / «Tiny subjects II», Katerina Botsari / George Apergis EMEX / Modular Expansion.
Exhibitions and installations
«No apocalypse now» Michalis Argyrou
Installation, 3rd floor
Artist and curator Michalis Argyrou presents his large installation «No apocalypse now».
«Obey», Nikos Artemis
Audiovisual installation, 3rd floor
«Obey» is an audiovisual installation by Opera di Bestia, a body of projects by Nikos Artemis which combine visual arts and electronic music. «This is not a love song» (2012) «Oval» (2014), «Joy D" (2017) «In Heaven» (2019) were presented in collaboration with CHEAPART.
«POTENTIAL» Ellie Antoniou
Curated by: Odette Kouzou
Video installation, 1st floor
The work POTENTIAL is a video-installation, whose scenes are created using a game engine, in which the artist Ellie Antoniou constructs a claustrophobic environment, representing the affective reality of the everyday. Emotions of claustrofobia, deadendness, meaninglessness, helplessness in a world that seems to be collapsing but at the same time keep going at an ever-changing, unbothered pace. Time becomes irrelevant. Dystopia is no longer a Hollywood scenario but an everyday confrontation with dystopian micro doses. Your body becomes irrelevant. Your body becomes absent.
POTENTIAL is a speculation for the possibilities of the future based on current information of the present and past. Even though the future cannot be predicted, it is increasingly becoming difficult to make proximate plans. Potential energy is the state of energy before it transforms into movement. Every moment of the present is a potential of indefinite scenarios and yet we feel trapped, paralysed by reality, contained and tied to a structure which is self-imposed, while at the same time utterly neautralised by horror. The state of potential is represented as a state of panic, comprehending the present as a state of potential rather as a predetermined state of events. The virtual space functions as an internalised space of the mind. The fictionalised space represents the body and the mind at the same time, while the inner space becomes a space for introspection.
*No humans Allowed
«Perestroyka» Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva / «Interference» Miriam Laussegger
Artist’s dialogue, 1st floor
Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva’s «Perestroyka» is an artwork about playing with soil, playing with shape and playing with gender. Devoted to all people in Russia that dared to transit or practice playing with gender on a daily basis and all people that cannot imagine a transition at all. An earthy illustration of a metamorphosis.
Film by Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva (she) and Lars* Kollros
Musik: Mort Garson, Objects by Sascha Alexandra Zaitseva
In Miriam Laussegger’s work «Interference», digital achievements enable us to develop new ways and new social systems in social development. How do reality and virtual worlds and their structures influence each other? Which spaces and possibilities open up the interplay between digital random processes and planned human interventions. This work deals with the interventions of digital processes in reality.
«Exit Athena», Selma Köran
Curated by: Olympia Tzortzi, Callirrhoë
Video installation, 3rd floor
With her seemingly surrealist, multimedia installations, Selma Köran questions traditional power structures and gender relations. For Exit Athena Köran has taken a canonical text from European literature and transformed it into an exuberant filmic spectacle: Hesiod’s Theogony tells the story of the Greek gods. Köran adds a fictitious final chapter to this text, in which she turns the hierarchy of the world of the Gods on Olympus on its head. The heroine in Köran’s new, feminist version is the clever and rebellious Athena, who steps into the ring against her own father, Zeus. Selma Köran creates her own alternative mythology using a visual language of exaggeration. She teases out the sensuousness and aggressivity in Hesiod’s cosmos and stages it in a colourful and anarchic vein. The linear narrative structure of Hesiod’s poem gives way to the fragmentary co-existence of grotesque film scenes and animated sequences using Plasticine figures.
*No humans Allowed
«Home -004-», Paolo Incarnato
Curated by: Stratis Pantazis
Installation, 2nd floor
Paolo Incarnato’s installation Home (2018) testifies to the glamor of another era, refers to the liquidity and the subversion of our reality. The artist covers the floor, the walls and the ceiling of the room of a former luxury apartment with recycled cardboards from industrial boxes, thus giving a new form to the space. His new risky “dwelling” specifically addresses the issue of global housing shortage, which has emerged from climate change, the continuous increase of poverty and socio-political instability that often lead to violent population displacements. The visitor is invited to “experience” indirectly the environment, the reality and the daily life of these vulnerable social groups, which most of the time, unfortunately, are just considered a number and a burden for society.
«Caryatid pin-up» Νίκος Γιαβρόπουλος
Video installation, 1st floor
The work of video artist Nikos Giavropoulos, is a direct reference to the Caryatid that one finds in the British Museum. As a true ambassador of Greek culture, she stands proudly and patiently for two centuries, until she suddenly decided to start a new career as a Pin up! The result is unsurpassed, we wish her good luck for the coming centuries! Caryatid Pin Up.
«We’re only interesting»
Curated by: Dimitri Yin, Phoenix Athens
1st floor
Dimitri Yin, Phoenix Athens created an in-situ exhibition with the work of Zachary T. Johnson, Alexandra Stamapoulou and Dimitri Yin.
«wonder is the beginning of wisdom», Ioanna Lin
Installation, 1st floor
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth». This sentence hides the great secret of heaven. God also revealed his secrets to prophets and wise men, from the writing of the wise. We can learn the secrets of the creation of the universe and the fate of mankind. These words of wisdom may help us gain a clearer understanding of our past, present and future.
Ioanna Lin’s installation «wonder is the beginning of wisdom», is suspended from the roof with 12 rolls / calligraphy papers 3.5 meters long each. Each roll contains calligraphy that expresses the words of the holy bible and the and knowledge of Sages, the perception of a democratic society and the creation of all things in the universe. A lamp in the center of the installation illuminates the entire space. People can stand in it and experience their inner meditation, their thoughts, in an instant journey through time and space accompanied by special music and sounds. They can express their thoughts and vision on this trip by writing down them down and sticking them on the wall. So their own words are heard, and things will be changed.
«Tiny subjects II», Katerina Botsari
Installation, 2nd floor
In Nadia Calara's book "Robert Smithson - Four Texts" is stated that Smithson with his strategies of "de-architecture", entropy and "new-monumentality", among other things, approaches the meaning of a work of art that exists as a network of constructions. in space and time. In Botsari's new work "Tiny Subjects II", the artist attempts to comment on the un-monumentality of today's condition as a call to a wandering reading of everyday life. The dialectic of materials comes to speak to us in the language of a community under structural suspension: Can "small" subjects stand tall at the time of the apparent impact? Will these dubious places become signs of a new nomadism?
Back to Athens 9 | International Art Meeting 2022 is organised by APART Art Research and Applications under the auspices of the City of Athens, with the support of the Austrian Embassy Athens and the Ministry of Culture of Austria, Zoia, produced and coordinated by CHEAPART, with the participation of the Cultural program Athens Intersection, theculturechannel.com and communication sponsor, dreamideamachine.
Back to Athens 9 | International Art Meeting 2022
No apocalypse now: A review
Isaiah Mansion
65 Patision and Ioulianou str., 104 33, Athens Greece
Opening: Wednesday, June 29, 16:00 - 22:00
Duration: June 29 - July 3, 2022
Hours: Wednesday - Friday 16:00 - 22:00, Saturday - Sunday 12:00 - 22:00
