Author: gourgourini

Our Fellow 2019 Valinia Svoronou’s new work “ENDYMION / Chapter 1: Penumbral Lunar Eclipse” is the first narrative chapter of the artist’s augmented reality application. The work is an astronomy-stargazing application that reveals a story alongside new year’s celestial events beginning with the penumbral lunar eclipse on January 10, 2020. The app is informed by various myths surrounding the zodiac constellations, as well as their use as a means of navigation across the centuries. 

The underlying narrative of the app takes the ancient Greek myth of Endymion as a point of departure to explore romantic ideas around historical exchanges between East and West in relation to the contemporary world. Endymion’s myth assimilates the plot twists of Roman times, its romantic readings, and appropriations in pop culture. 

Svoronou uses the tools of astronomy to create a node where mythologies across time and geographical boundaries converge with scientific observation. The work, in addition to the app, exists as sculptural installation and a series of prints. As a porous membrane between the material, the digital, and the corporeal, the work allows for various stories to interweave, exploring their individual boundaries and allowing for them to resolve variously. Zodiac myths are understood here as escape plans, distractions, detours and wanderings. Svoronou brings together seemingly contradictory content to create something new, suggesting a kind of intuitive navigation-reading. She raises a series of questions about positivist readings of science, history and the art world. Through the mythological connection of Endymion and the Moon, she focuses on the power relations of the observer and the observed, subject and object, on the gendered dimension of the gaze to negotiate the concrete nature of the latter. 

Svoronou seeks to rethink the political possibilities of appropriation in art within the museum. Language, representation, and the space of action become tools and targets of critique – a means of reflection on the way stories are constructed, exhibited and consumed.

The exhibition is a living documentation of continuous artistic activity in the city as established Athens based artists, former Snehta residents and experimental practitioners will be coming together to exhibit small scale works, representative of their work and practice.

Fellows participating: Augustus Veinoglou, Eriphyli Veneri, Panos Profitis, Stefania Strouza.

Opening: 18th December, 20:00
Duration : 18-28 December

The legendary Rebound Club Athens opens its doors in Amerikis Square to nine contemporary Greek visual artists. Stripped of music, its atmospheric underground space turns into a one-night stand actionfield for interventions in the form of performance, video, installation and sculpture. Everything black, black only. The bar will operate normally.

Rebound Club Athens
Mithimnis 43, Amerikis Square
Thursday, 12th December 2019 @ 20:00

Curated and coordinated by:  Eriphyli Veneri (Fellow 2019), Naira Stergiou

Artists participating:

Despina Charitonidi | Olga Evangelidou (Fellow 2019)| Panos Profitis (Fellow 2018) | Vasilis Papageorgiou (Fellow 2018) | Thalia Raftopoulou | Naira Stergiou | Alexandros Tzannis (Fellow 2019) | Augustus Veinoglou(Fellow 2018) | Eriphyli Veneri (Fellow 2019)

It moves and it shouts. In my head. Shhhhhhhhh, writes queer French author Guillaume Dustan [1965-2005], who delved into the hedonism of the nightclubs and politicized the state of desire, the drive for ecstatic celebration.

IT MOVES AND IT SHOUTS wants to talk about empathising, becoming hybrid — dancing bodies, dancing minds towards a political body. It investigates new ways of perceiving the world, contextualising knowledge as a situated experience, but also playing with and dissolving the idea of borders, somatic, geographical, online or offline. It is through desire and pleasure that we navigate through this world, contesting at the same time various hierarchies. The works bring into consideration class, race, gender and sexuality, ability and illness as intersectional and propose new ecologies of existence.

The exhibition brings together works by Dimitris Dokatzis, Virginia Mastrogiannaki (Fellow 2019), Eva Papamargariti (Fellow 2019), Theodoulos Polyviou & Kiss the Architect, Spyros Rennt, Korallia Stergides, Marina Miliou-Theocharaki, Leontios Toumpouris, Kyle Vu-Dunn, Marina Xenofontos.

Curated by: Panos Giannikopoulos

Haus N Athen, Kairi 6, Monastiraki
Opening: 5 December at 20:00
Duration: 5 December 2019 – 5 January 2020
Opening hours: Fri.-Sat. 16:00-20:00

Akwa Ibom announces its inaugural exhibition ‘Ties to People, of a Certain Intensity’ which will be opened to the public Tuesday, December 3, at seven p.m. It will be an uncustomary group show featuring a new two-part film by Rosalind Nashashibi and six paintings by the newly minted NBA (Agency of New Way). NBA is currently Nick Bastis, Liudvikas Buklys, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Dalia Dūdenaitė, Ona Kvintaitė and Elena Narbutaitė working jointly. This is the second time their work will be shown publicly. Their first exhibition titled ‘Giant’ opened earlier this year at Kunstverein Langenhagen in Germany, consisting of two wall paintings.

Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Shobies’ Story’, which tells the tale of the first human crew to participate in a newly invented faster-than-light mode of space travel, the film considers how we can remain connected to others outside of linear time where language, and therefore communication too, break down. Following this disruption of the emotional life of the individuals that make up the film’s unlikely but fated group, the film inspires an evolved idea of love – “general love, not just personal love” as Elena says – that extends beyond desire into the terrain of a bond rooted in the cohabitation of time. Nashashibi consulted the ‘I Ching’, an ancient Chinese divination manual, at the start of the shooting and has used its response to shape the making of the film and to title both parts. The outcome is an atypical sci-fi film that feels a lot like collaborative auto-fiction.

Rosalind Nashashibi is a London-based artist working in film and painting. Recent solo shows include Witte de With in Rotterdam in 2018 and Vienna Secession and CAAC Seville in 2019. Nashashibi is currently artist in residence at the National Gallery, London. She was a Turner Prize nominee in 2017, and her work has been included in Documenta 14, Manifesta 7, the Nordic Triennial, and Sharjah 10, and she won the Beck’s Futures prize in 2003. She is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University and is part of the duo Nashashibi/Skaer with Lucy Skaer.

NBA (Agency of New Way) is a group which makes artworks and exhibitions. For this occasion, the paintings of NBA were made by Nick Bastis, Liudvikas Buklys, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Dalia Dūdenaitė, Ona Kvintaitė and Elena Narbutaitė.

Artists: Rosalind Nashashibi, NBA (Agency of New Way): Nick Bastis, Liudvikas Buklys, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Dalia Dūdenaitė, Ona Kvintaitė and Elena Narbutaitė

OPENING Tuesday, December 3, at seven p.m. On view December 11, 2019 – February 14, 2020

https://akwaibomathens.org/

Curation: Eva Vaslamatzi (Fellow 2019)
Artists: Maria Theodoraki, Marcos Lutyens, Basim Magdy, Kosmas Nikolaou (Fellow 2018), Malvina Panagiotidi (Fellow 2018)
Duration: 20.11.2019 – 26.01.2020
Megaron, Vas. Sofias Ave. & Kokkali St.

Within a context of experimentation and with the initiative of SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019 Marina Papadaki, Hydroexpress Project, opened its doors at November 9th. It is a hybrid space that houses an artist, a plumber and carries the memories of five generations. Its name is borrowed from the plumber’s shop”Ydroexpres”.

Hydroexpress Project is an ongoing project, during which, the events that are going to take place will be accompanied each time by a publication for the purpose of archiving. It is a hybrid that emerged from entering a “readymade”, without encroaching it. It could historically become the continuation of a chronic evolutionary process. There will be no attempt to create a new context or a new state. It will work in reverse. Through intimacy and by deconstructing the identity of the place, it is going to talk about already existing contexts, attitudes, stereotypes, and explore institutions, norms, and socioeconomic patterns.

At the Hydroexpress’ first project the space opens its doors and invites two artists, Anestis Ioannou and Vangelis Savvas, and three curators –Danai Giannoglou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019), Myrto Katsimicha and Eleni Riga – to place themselves  among this hybrid environment and its own signifieds.

ARTISTS:
Anestis Ioannou
Vangelis Savvas

WRITERS:
Danai Giannoglou
Myrto Katsimicha
Eleni Riga

OPEN DAYS:
Sunday 10/11
Friday 15/11
Saturday 16/11 & Sunday 17/11
17:00 – 20:00
or by appointment

The exhibition Overview Effect: Encountering the Cosmos presented in the context of the 7th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, invites us to engage in an exciting and remarkably refreshing parallel reading of moving and still images alike.

The Overview Effect, thanks to which astronauts see the Earth as a borderless whole, our common home without differences – as well as the fears, the hopes, the utopia, the reality, and the disillusionment that arise from this – is the mortar that binds and constitutes the fourteen films of the International Competition Section of the 60th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

These films were allocated to fourteen young Greek artists, each of whom undertook to comment on one of them and create an original work of art with absolute freedom and no restrictions as to materials, technique, and style. The only guideline they were given by the TIFF was to study the Overview Effect and view the films through its lens, activating the process of highlighting the non-visible.

5 SNF ARTWORKS Fellows take part in the exhibition: Despina Flessa (Fellow 2018), Panos Kompis (Fellow 2018), Manolis D. Lemos (Fellow 2018), Virginia Mastrogiannaki (Fellow 2019) , Pavlos Tsakonas (Fellow 2018)

Other participating artists are:
Christos Delidimos, Giorgos Gerontides, Zoe Hatziyannaki, Kalos- Klio, Irini Karayannopoulou,  Elias Mamaliogas, Konstantinos Patsios, Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, Alexis Vasilikos

Curation: Orestis Andreadakis / Production & Coordination: Thanos Stavropoulos

The Fulbright Foundation and Fulbright Artists Alumni, in collaboration with i-D ProjectArt, invite you to support the Fulbright Scholarship Program by acquiring a work of art. All proceeds will benefit the Fulbright Scholarship Program. The “Art Supports Education – Fulbright Alumni Art Series” is an initiative that began in 2009. In recognition of the fundamental role of education, Fulbright artist alumni donate their works in support of the Fulbright Scholarship Program.

This year’s series, “Fulbright POLYMORPHIA”, aims to highlight the diversity (polymorphia) of expression that characterizes the contemporary visual art scene and the arts in general, an element that is firmly supported by the Fulbright Artist Program.

Three of are Fellows – Fotis Sagonas (2018), Alex Simopoulos (2018) ,  Antonis Theodoridis  (2019) – participate among other artists.

Curation: Evgenia Alexaki

Participating Artists:
Erieta Attali, Dora Economou, Efi Chalikopoulou, Leonidas Chalepas, Titina Chalmatzi, Sofia Dona, Fotis Flevotomos, Elias Kafouros, Pygmalion Karatzas, Diane Katsiaficas, Zoe Keramea, Apostolos Kilessopoulos, Sia Kyriakakos, Pelagia Kyriazi, Maria Letsiou, Ioannis Michalou(di)s, Eleni Mylonas, Dimitris Papaioannou + Marilena Stafylidou, Lambros Papanikolatos, Vangelis Pliarides, Loukia Richards, Fotis Sagonas, Alex Simopoulos, Georgios Taxidis, Antonis Theodoridis, Angeliki Chaido Tsoli, Giorgios Tzinoudis, Costas Varotsos, Nikolas Ventourakis, Adonis Volanakis, Kristina Williamson, Zafos Xagoraris, Yiorgis Yerolymbos, Sotos Zachariadis, Theodoros Zafeiropoulos

On view until December 7th, 2019

Constantly present in contemporary culture, play due to its abrupt and unexpected nature has been put under manifold and -one could claim- inspired control mechanisms: absolute connection with infancy or idleness, educationally tooled to infuse common principles and behaviours. Ιn the 20th century, in the sake of the socially engaged communicational strategies, play has been used from arts institutions to propagate the inclusive cultural model. Participatory art practices, public programming built on the triptych of “play-create-learn” have functioned as attempts to orchestrate the notion of play and the playful practice of art into hegemonic narratives. Artists themselves, are invited to constrain their playful power of experimenting, creating, interacting with the material and the immaterial to pace with the prevalent art industry.

Irini Karayannopoulou, Anna Lascari, Irini Bachlitzanaki and Anastasia Pavlou (Fellow 2019) explore the possible ground of the element of play through various practices, media and gestures in the recently founded space of Automatic Transmission.

Curator: Christina Petkopoulou (Fellow 2019)

Maria Tsagkari (Fellow 2019) presents her new video work Intimate letters at the exhibition Into my garden come in Aigio, Greece, a contemporary art show, part of the Primarolia Festival 2019.

Eight artists arrive in Aigio eager to start a new conversation with the place. Aigio, a town cradled between the sea and the high mountains holds a history that dates back to ancient times and offers a fertile ground of artistic creation and dialogue through a contemporary art exhibition. The exhibition focuses on the metaphorical concept of the garden. The title is taken from Emily Dickinson’s verse “Into my garden come!”, perceived as a meeting and gathering of senses, ingredients, objects, ideas – a point of conjunction, of matter and meaning, of past and future. This new sowing of people, ideas and meetings takes place in the coastal zone of Aigio, known as Vostizza during the Middle Ages, meaning the city of gardens, lending the famous name to the local currant variety PDO «VOSTIZZA».

Artists: Rob Kesseler, Agalis Manessi, Aggelos Antonopoulos, Luc Messinezis, Yiannis Brouzos, Maria Tsagkari, Kostas Pappas and Bill Psarras

Curator: Nansy Charitonidou

As a result of advances in machine learning, our understanding of today’s world is ever more mediated by machines. What challenges does deep learning bring to human-based knowledge? What do machines see and do differently than humans? How can artificial intelligence enhance new forms of experience and understanding?

To address these questions, in Counting Craters on the Moon, Kyriaki Goni purposely turns her gaze to a distant and uncanny territory: the Moon and its surface. The Moon, according to the artist, constitutes a fascinating example and offers an interesting analogy. Lacking an atmosphere, it operates as a data center which stores in its body the memory of our solar system and allows predictions for the future. The project presents an imaginary encounter between astronomer Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt (1825–1884) and the neural network DeepMoon, both of which set out to count the craters on the moon. Speculating upon the possible synergies between human and machine, the artist invites us to imagine how we can learn from and with machines in order to build different, multiple and, possibly, collective understandings of the surrounding world and its cosmos.

Curated by Daphne Dragona

SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019 Theodoros Giannakis takes part at Frieaze London with the work Always Already aka a primitivism mirage again. The installation is part of Frieze East End Sunday.

Congrats to Konstantinos Antonopoulos and Vasilis Kekatos (ARTWORKS Fellows 2019) for winning the award in the Greek Short Stories in competition awards – at the 25th Athens International Film Festival among 311 submissions!

The award for Best Director was presented to Konstantinos Antonopoulos for “Postcards from the End of the World”. The jury awarded this film for being a “redemptive film, elegant and well made”. The award was generously accepted by the director.

The award for Best Film went to: “The Distance Between Us and the Sky” by  Vasilis Kekatos.

ARTWORKS team is proud & happy :)

“The Manual of the Perfect Traveler” is a group show that explores the concept of travel. Building on Kazantzakis’s phrase “That is why every Perfect Traveler always creates the country where he travels”, six artists illustrate their journey.

A journey of imagination, of self-awareness, or even a real journey.
What comes to our mind when we think of a journey? Is it a getaway, a way out, or a need for knowledge and adventure? In any realization, a journey is an exercise-path leading to inner exploration and development.
An unknown or familiar destination, even a trip of imagination, becomes a means that pushes us out of our comfort zone and changes our perspective through the making of our “own country”.
Through their personal narrative, the artists of the exhibition create a unique manual of the Perfect Traveler, for all those who love to travel and dream.

Curated by: Dialektaki Maria

Artists: Marina Velisioti (Castrata Feel), Kostis Velonis , Leonidas Giannakopoulos, Rania Bellou (Fellow 2018), Pavlos Tsakonas (Fellow 2018), Marco Raparelli