A Thousand Doors

A Thousand Doors

Exhibition 'A Thousand Doors' at the Gennadius Library in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery

NEON and the Whitechapel Gallery are collaborating to present an exhibition of works by Greek and international artists at the Gennadius Library curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE, the Director of the Whitechapel Gallery. The exhibition will be installed throughout the venue, both inside the library spaces and outside them in its formal gardens. The selected works are executed in a wide range of media, and include video, sound and sculpture installations.

Participating artists include Edward Allington, Matthew Barney, Christian Boltanski, Pavel Büchler, Michael Dean, Nina Fischer and Maroan El Sani, Ceal Floyer, Isa Genzken, Shuruq Harb, Nigel Henderson, Georg Herold, Susan Hiller, Hannah Höch, John Latham, Mark Manders, Juan Muñoz, Giuseppe Penone, Elizabeth Price, Michael Rakowitz, Annie Ratti, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Daniel Silver, Francis Upritchard, Adrián Villar Rojas, Jane and Louis Wilson. New works have also been commissioned from the Greek artists Jannis Kounellis, Nikos Navridis, Paky Vlassopoulou, Kostas Ioannidis and Valentina Karga.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of programmes (free guided tours, open discussions, and educational programmes) created by Greek and international curators who have participated in the Curatorial Exchange Programme organized by NEON and the Whitechapel Gallery since 2012. [more]

Opened in 1926 with 26,000 volumes from diplomat and bibliophile, Joannes Gennadius, the Gennadius Library now holds a richly diverse collection of over 120,000 books and rare bindings, archives, manuscripts, and works of art illuminating the Hellenic tradition and neighboring cultures.

Located in an architecturally significant building across the street from the main American School campus, the Library has become an internationally renowned center for the study of Greek history, literature, and art, from ancient to modern times. In addition to its role as a library and research institution, “the Gennadeion” is also an active participant in the Athenian and international community through its public lectures, seminars, concerts, exhibitions, and publications.

Jannis Kounellis

 

 

Jannis Kounellis at Cycladic Art Museum

Jannis Kounellis exhibits a new and site specific work at the Museum of Cycladic Art. It is the first solo exhibition in Greece after many years, housed at the Stathatos Mansion, the neoclassical wing of the Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jannis Kounellis, whose contribution to the international art movement of Arte Povera has been defining, left Greece very young to leave behind the trauma of the civil war. He now returns to create a work amidst the economic and social crisis that Greece is currently going through. Kounellis's installation can only be a response to this turmoil, as he puts it, “at this particular moment it would be impossible to have just an exhibition of art in Greece”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For his exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Kounellis uses materials found in the local Athenian markets and junkyards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These objects carry the history of the place, of a city that has been through endless changes of populations, ideologies, and levels of prosperity and in the last few years some very extreme changes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Kounellis uses newspapers, coal, burlap sacks, old shoes and glasses, overcoats, soil and iron bars for this pieces, which are spread in the spaces of the neoclassical building.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The same objects carry personal memories and they can be symbols of desires and hope but also of failed dreams and aspirations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Kounellis’s work the personal history and the history of the place, the city, are equally important. The black overcoats that appear repeatedly in his work can represent the artist, the viewer, but also the ‘little guy’,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chaplin’s tramp of our times, who gets trampled over while societies change. The works might reflect current problems but as always in Kounellis’s works, even though the objects have their own history, they are incorporated in his installations in such a way that in the end they become universal, ancient and modern.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few words on the artist
Born in Piraeus, Greece in 1936, Kounellis moved to Rome in 1956 and is now considered as one of the most important artists of the Arte Povera movement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Αs coined by curator Germano Celant, the term Arte Povera refers to the humble materials that Kounellis and others such as Boetti, Calzolari and Merz used in their work. Arte Povera was not a group of artists using a certain style; what the artists had in common was the open-ended experimentation, working outside formal limitations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Arte Povera term did not refer to impoverished materials, but to art made without restraints, with found objects.        [ more ]

Until 08.10.2012