Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Remap3 nine



ReMap3
An international contemporary art programme
Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio, Athens, Greece
12 September – 30 October 2011








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AD GALLERY - CURATOR: CHRISTINA ANDROULIDAKI / PLACEMENTS – REPLACEMENTS – MISPLACEMENTS: TOWARDS A NEW REMAPPING





The show PLACEMENTS – REPLACEMENTS – MISPLACEMENTS: Towards a New Remapping deals with the idea of relocation (social, national, economic, political) and focuses on the exploration of this notion through the works of 8 emerging Greek and international artists.

The Remap project and the location of the exhibition in Metaxourgeio, one of the most historic, diverse, arresting and yet deprived, areas of Athens functions as a case study in itself demonstrating through the works of visual artists the dynamics and problematics of such a remapping. The works bring up issues of emigration, immigration, warfare, human rights abuse, social exclusion, inequality, marginalization, xenophobia, as well as utopian dreaming, multiculturalism, diversity, hope and rebirth.






The artists work on a variety of media such as sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, video and performance. Augusta Atla’s photographic collages combine elements from her performances, popular magazines, anatomic books and folkloric greek costumes to create peculiar works that touch on issues of femininity, motherhood and the suffering female body.

Maro Fassouli’s sculptures draw attention to issues of encapsulation and social exclusion, exploring ideas of the hidden and the visible, inner and outer space, the familiar and the foreign. Alana Kakoyiannis’ poetic documentary film reflects on the notion of home through the lens of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot displacement on the divided island of Cyprus and captures the potency of the political conflict through personal perspectives. Alexandros Laios’ works comment on the inability of the west to accommodate and effort to accumulate immigrants into the states and societies, as well as the permanent state of “transit” those people are forced to stay. Maria Polyzoidou paints an imaginary world, a picturesque landscape that falls apart, like a miniature of the world we have dreamt of. Theo Prodromidis envisages a utopian structure upon the remains of an architectural plan that was never built, Dimitris Foutris intervenes on the exterior of the building to observe on its use, function and history within society and finally, Anastassis Stratakis presents a segment of his photographic series Strange Fruit to comment on the way history repeats itself by the use of violence, obscurantism and exclusion from the time when witch hunting was performed, up to the assaults triggered by xenophobia performed in the present day.
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(a)

THE APARTMENT / KOSTAS TSOLIS CURATED BY DIMITRIS DOKATZIS

The Apartment is pleased to participate in ReMap3 with a focused presentation of works by Greek artist Kostas Tsolis, including painting, collage and artist books.

 Kostas Tsolis takes inspiration from found, historical and often ideologically violent images, which he renders into representational paintings. He then deconstructs them by adding layers of straight lines that hinder our view of the subject matter, questioning thus the authoritative nature of representation and proposing a more engaged abstraction.

The exhibition at ReMap is curated by Dimitris Dokatzis, one of the artists that shaped Greek conceptual art in the late 80s through the mid-90s, and communicates shared concerns on history, politics and art in relation to representation.
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(b)
DECOY  / IRIS TOULIATOU CURATED BY OLGA HATZIDAKI

Following the same lineage of her previous work in DECOY, Iris Touliatou investigates the ontological dimensions of architecture and identifies its current validity through the remarkable variety of its uses and thus, its relation to a wide spectre of references. The project consists in replicating the lines of sunlight that protrude through the Athens’ Public Tobacco Factory and relocating them into the exhibition space. The factory built in 1927 functioned for seventy years. It is now a relic from an age of intense industrial activity and is used to house the Library of the Hellenic Parliament.

In DECOY replicated light will mold the history, words, and symbols contained in the Tobacco Factory, a landmark of historical significance, into its own respective cast. Employing theatrical mechanisms, sunlight will be staged as spotlights in the exhibition space. The luminous appearance of the artificial sun will work around the shapes of the new structure, creating narrative lines between the two spaces. Elements and artifacts composing the installation will be three-dimensional collages and illusion-sculptures, floating and disappearing as if part of a stage magician’s show.






An associative point of reference is war magician Jasper Maskelyne. In WWII, Maskelyne created large-scale ruses and illusions, by displacing landmarks and creating mock light patterns of entire cities like Alexandria, to serve as decoys for the Germans. This wartime trickery was played in “a theater of operations”; a term coined as military jargon will be appropriated for the space/play/stage, a play on words which juxtaposes and is symptomatic of the current Athenian political scene.

With subtle gestures, DECOY aims to reconstitute architecture and its content, creating accounts of geometric timekeeping, while exploring methods of representation. The mise en scene will reveal backstage mechanics, creating an on-and-off (the) stage, an exchange of subject and object, audience and actors, certainty and illusion.



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