Month: December 2023

BONE TO BONE exhibition, curated by Thanasis Chondros and Alexandra Katsiani.
Participating artists: D. Ameladiotis, G. Kaltsidis, Th. Karonis, N. Kryonidis, V. Mastrogiannaki & St. Mpampalos, F. Nuskas, S. Pehlivanidou, N. Varytimiadis.

With Stefanos Mpampalos in sound editing, Virginia Mastrogiannaki present the video yιantes / the painter and the girl, a reference to the work of Nikolaos Gyzis.
The painted portrait entitled yιantes by N. Gyzis is a daring work for its era (1878), both in terms of its incomplete painting gesture and its title itself, and therefore open to many interpretations.
Υiantes painted by N. Gyzis coexists and is exhibited in the National Gallery with his own portrait – slightly earlier – painted by his colleague Ludwig Thiersch (1865).

The exhibition “BONE TO BONE” will run until Thursday 14 December 2023
Daily from 18:00 to 22:00
To Pikap Kato, 57 Olympou str, Thessaloniki, Greece

*Virginia Mastrogiannaki is a visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2019)

Elli Antoniou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow) participates in two exhibitions in London.

29/11 Al Dente: A Feast for the Senses
Curated by Edoardo Monti
Bernston Bhattachatjee, London, W1T 3NE

30/11 things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Curated by Kollektiv Collective
Tabula Rasa Gallery, London, N1 6AQ

Al Dente: A Feast for the Senses opens on Wednesday, 29 November 6-8pm, at Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery. Guest-curated by Edoardo Monti, the exhibition is shining a spotlight on the creative endeavours of twelve artists who recently completed a month-long residency at his prestigious Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy. Monti has carefully curated a selection of artists who are evolving the craft of their artistic field and finding international recognition as ones to watch. Exhibited artists are Hiva Alizadeh, Elli Antoniou, Andrea Bocca, Bea Bonafini, Thomas De Falco, Kirsten Deirup, John Fou, David Gardner, Delphine Hennelly, Eliza Hopewell, Madeleine Roger-Lacan, and Hannah Tilson.

As the founder and driving force behind one of the world’s leading residencies, Monti places paramount importance on his social duty to nurture and champion emerging talent. In doing so, he has established a sense of community and refuge at Palazzo Monti, where resident artists become part of his family and home. Al Dente: A Feast for the Senses is an example of Monti’s curatorial household and aptitude for bringing together artists with diverse practices and

Backgrounds.

—

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold opens on Thursday, 30 November, 6–8pm, at Tabula Rasa Gallery. Guest-curated by London-based curatorial collective Kollektiv Collective, this collaborative and site-specific group exhibition features newly commissioned and existing works by artists Elli Antoniou, Ali Glover and Richard Dean Hughes.

In an attempt to think the unthought and give form to the formless, things fall apart; the centre cannot hold explores an aesthetic of rebuilding. Seeking potential in slippage and dissonance, it imagines a mode of perception turning to non-quantifiable ways of understanding. Relying on opacity and ambivalence as sources of knowledge, the exhibition dilutes the familiar and reverses the definite, searching for liberation in the absence of anticipation. The gallery becomes trapped in the vacuum of its own space, where the facades have collapsed and in the ruins of certainty, secrets are revealed in whispers. Alongside each other, the works of Elli Antoniou, Ali Glover and Richard Hughes defy expectations, demanding questions be answered otherwise.

The Hellenic Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family Affairs, completing its “Art, a silent revolution” program, presents an exhibition and a conference on 5, 6, and 7 December 2023 at the Athens Conservatoire.

It presents ten young artists and collectives from all over Greece selected through an open call to express how their work (visual arts, moving image, performance) can serve as a dynamic tool of social transformation and change. The program creates a forum for discussion on how to address violence, abuse, harassment, and bullying. By acknowledging and examining similar traumatic cases, the artists present their perspectives, suggesting ways to heal and prevent them individually and collectively. Their works transmit messages against oppression, stereotypes, prejudices, and inequalities.

How can young people build a new framework of empowerment that fosters visibility and inclusivity for all individuals? What is their role in awakening and shaping an egalitarian society where culture is the central drive for development? A parallel conference will bring together professionals from art and culture, representatives of the university community, politicians, educators, sociologists, and psychologists.

Participating artists: Dimitra Stavropoulou, Dimitris Kapetanou, Virginia Russolo, Eleanna Balesi, Sia-Efstathia Koutli, Elina Demirtzioglou & Aristeidis Lappas, Georgette Alimperti & Niki Theodoridi, Fotini Tatsi, Giorgos Palaeologos, Angelos Papadopoulos.

The program is curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis / K-Gold Temporary Gallery.

Opening: Tuesday 5/12, 19:00, Ω2 Complex, Athens Conservatoire
Exhibition opening hours: 6-7/12, 10:00-20:00
Conference opening hours: 6-7/12, 10:00-18:00

*Aristeidis Lappas, Angelos Papadopoulos and Nicolas Vamvouklis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

THAT WHICH WAS IS NOW NO MORE

On Tuesday December 5th 2023, from 18:00 until 21:00, the group show titled That which was is now no more opens at Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.

Participating artists:
Chronis Botsoglou, Nikos Komiotis, Natalia Manta, Eva Mitala, Doreida Xhogu

Curated by Galini Lazani

The exhibition will be on view until 27.01.2024

—
Some issues are hard to talk about. Probably because they are hard to comprehend. And some concepts are hard to narrow down. The title of this exhibition encloses everything that changes around us and shakes us up. Animate and inanimate beings, our environment, the people that surround us and ourselves. Things that perish, change, are reborn. That which was is now no more. Yet, it is something new.

The artists that present their work in this exhibition each deal, through their own thoughts and means, with these notions of change and loss, but also with the creation that eventually results from them.

Doreida Xhogu’s video, accompanied by a series of small wooden sculptures reminiscent of relics, depicts the personal ritual created by the artist in order to come to terms with her father’s death, which occurred during her absence. In his workplace, a mine in Albania, the artist constructed a huge human effigy out of straw and tar, which she then bedded for one night in her house and finally burned. The way she came up with to process this painful feeling of loss turned out to be her own personal creation after all.

Τhe new series of Eva Mitala‘s silkscreen prints also debate loss, in a sense. A loss of a completely different kind though, not so permanent and stagnant, but rather one that points to a shifting condition. Through her research on Chile’s Atacama Desert and the life of the indigenous inhabitants of the region, she incorporates in her work, through a mixture of digital and traditional techniques, issues that concern us all. Issues that become tangible in a “world in transition”, as she calls it, such as the extinction of traditional practices, languages, natural habitats. However, through extinction comes rebirth in the form of new, different ways of creation, as culture always finds its way to express itself.

Furthermore, the works presented by Natalia Manta, which always give the viewer the feeling that they come from or are intended for some kind of ritual, also deal with the life-giving power of loss and danger, since they take the form of sculptural totems in which one can recognize the bearing of some new life, yet at the same time of some unidentifiable threat as well. “Essentially, the entire installation reflects a prolonged suspension, in which existential anguish is established and defined as hope”, the artist mentions.

These thoughts, which contemplate the agony of human existence and its transfiguration into creation, lead to Chronis Botsoglou‘s series of works in which he portrays his mother during the days of her sickness. Their association to the exhibition is not about old age and death, but about the dementia that afflicted her amid her final years and everything that comes along with it; the deterioration of a person’s consciousness, personality and identity. “The disintegration of the face”, as Botsoglou described it referring to his mother, subsequently relates to Nikos Komiotis’ painting.

The main morphological element of Komiotis’ work is the disfiguration of human characteristics, due to which the figures he depicts appear to fluctuate between a lifeless and an animalistic condition of being. His frequent inspiration from the sequence of film frames, where for split seconds the features get mixed up, jumbled and lost, reminds us once again that subtle changes can ultimately lead to a new spectacle, a new creation.

Galini Lazani
November 2023

Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center / 48, Armatolon & Klefton Street, Athens 114 71
tel: +30 210 6439466 / fax:+30 210 6442852 / www.art-tounta.gr / [email protected]

Visiting hours: Tue – Thu: 15:00 – 20:00, Wed – Fri: 12:00 – 20:00, Saturday: 12:00 – 16:00

*The title of the exhibition was inspired by a phrase from Thomas Hardy’s novel A pair of blue eyes: “…she that was is now no more”.

The title of the new evolving project is ‘The Meaning of Queer Ritual Fusion 1’, arising from the shared need of four individuals to coexist. Is there a meaning in making art today? The goal is for this sharing with the audience to be the first of many.

2,3,4,9,10 December 2023, 21.00
Location: Μ54
Μενάνδρου 54, Αθήνα
https://goo.gl/maps/HkLxuPEtYDYSWM7k8

Creation-Participants: Pagona Boubasakou, Angelos Papadopoulos, Elpiniki Saripanidou, Elsa Siskou
Concept – Directorial Supervision: Angelos Papadopoulos
Music: Nikos Antonopoulos
Costume Design – Construction: Dynno Dada
Lighting Design: Janos Mazis
Dramaturgical Contribution: Elena Novakovic
Trailer, Poster: Katerina Tsakiri
Make-up Art: Emmanuel Kamakaris
Special Thanks: Kosmas Lapidis, Fay Tzouma, Charlotte Virgile

The opening of the exhibition will take place on Friday, December 15 at the Old Oil Mill Factory during the closing ceremony of 2023 Eleusis, Mystery 1 CLOSING: OPENING, A Ceremony.

The installation touches upon the environmental destruction that the planet is experiencing today,starting from the coastal zone of Elefsina. Continuing her artistic work on the myth of Medea, Stefania Strouza chooses as a reference point Heiner Müller’s three-part play Verkommenes Ufer − Medeamaterial − Landschaft mit Argonauten [Despoiled Shore – Medeamaterial – Landscape with Argonauts] (1982). In this text, Medea is perceived as a “place” where memories and traumas of a violent patriarchal and consumerist world are embedded. The artist makes use of this interpretation and proceeds to identify Medea with Nature and with the land of Elefsina, taking into account the consequences of heavy industry as well as the corrosion of abandoned ships in the area.

The work is a sculptural installation in three distinct yet connected parts following the structure of Müller’s text. These parts are developed in space as islets and parts of a coastal area such as the bay of Elefsina.

Despoiled Shore refers to a “landscape with nature in decay”, as Müller himself describes it, where the traces of human pollution and destruction are visible. A floor-standing work as a conglomerate and an amalgam of natural and industrial materials suggests a landscape almost abandoned, with references to erosion, pollution and the overexploitation of nature.

Medeamaterial focuses on gender identity and inequality, but also on the agency and transformation of matter. A garment-sculpture made of transparent plastic with oxidized parts evokes the wedding dress with which Medea killed Glauce. It refers to the danger of invisible pollution and the socio-political atmosphere that surrounds and threatens entities and communities around the world.

Landscape with Argonauts is a reference to the collective unconscious of a modern society confronted with exploitation, destruction and its own responsibility. Aluminium sculptures refer to the mythological Argo, to the carcasses of decommissioned ships and to technological remnants. The landscape functions as a commentary on the desire for unchecked technological progress and forms of colonisation from the past to this day.

In this visual triptych, Medea as a place traumatised by human activity allows the relationships between nature and culture, resilience and decay, myth and reality to become visible, so that their connection and interdependence can be seen. Balancing between them as a techno-physical force, her character reveals, according to the artist, how myths can speak to the ruined landscapes of the Anthropocene and activate practices of collective knowledge and action through materiality itself.

Concept, Artwork: Stefania Strouza
Curatorial direction: Zoi Moutsokou – Director of Contemporary Art 2023 Eleusis
Exhibition Curator: Daphne Dragona
Detailed design & implementation: Ioannis Panagiotidis, qoop metalworks – Nikos Soulis
3D model design: qoop metalworks – Christos Gyftopoulos
Metal supporting structures: qoop metalworks
Project construction & supervision: Ioannis Panagiotidis
Lighting / electrical installation: Nikos Stamatopoulos
Project Coordination: Zoi Moutsokou, Zoi Drakopoulou
Production Assistants: Tsampika Kotoula, Simone Niarou
Production Management: DIADROMES POLITISMOU NPC
Materials sponsorship: Municipality workshops of Elefsina, EVOMAT – Pipilis Lime products

Mystery 87 I My Sea Journey, I My Land Claim
Dates 15.12.2023—11.02.2024
From December 15 to February 11, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents Mystery 87 I My Sea Journey, I My Land Claim, the new sculpture installation by the acclaimed visual artist Stefania Strouza honoured with this year’s Art Athina Prize for young artists.

Information:
Duration: December 15, 2023 – February 11, 2024
Opening hours:
Wednesday to Friday, 17.00 – 20.00
Saturday & Sunday, 13.00 – 20.00
Location: Old Oil Mill Factory

Opening:
Friday, December 15 – 18.00 [during the closing ceremony of 2023 Eleusis, Mystery 1 CLOSING: OPENING, A Ceremony]

*Stefania Strouza is SNF ARTWORKS Visual Arts Fellow 2018