ROAMING IMAGES Routes - MMCA - Biennale 3 Thessaloniki (2011)

Roaming Images Routes at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki is an exhibition (18/9/2011 - 8/1/2012) consisting of works of art that have been produced and/or exhibited in the frame of the Roaming Images project. This project has been organized during the Biennial year 2011 in various cities – stations of the Arabian peninsula including the broader area of the Middle East. In cities such as Muscat, Sharjah, Alexandria, Jaffa, Nicosia, Beirut and Damascus, appointed correspondent curators have been asked to select artists and scholars based in these cities and conceive and implement a project in collaboration with institutions of their region. The local projects, which have been specially developed for this purpose have been inspired by the theoretical framework of Roaming Images and they take various shapes and formats such as exhibitions, video programs, public lectures, roundtable discussions, workshops, filmic documentations. Roaming Images Routes at the MMCA integrates these works in a single presentation along with the documentation of the initial events in the various cities of origin.
The outcome of this endeavor is a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary art, a map of creativity along these geographic and cultural routes. The unique work-in-progress character of Roaming Images Routes is also reflected in the form of its presentation at the MMCA in Thessaloniki. It takes place in the form of continuously remodeled displays showing different works each time during the Biennial. Each setting creates different types of dialogues between works of art and a novel point of view on geographies and cultures.
In this regard, an important part of the project is to reflect also on the conditions of its own reception and dissemination. The project offers a double viewing, on one hand by the audience of the local event, and on the other by the audience of an international biennial. This raises the question on the ‘marginal’ visibility of art communities and cultural territories of the art system’s periphery. But it also puts the question about a notion of art production that is orchestrated in such a way so as to be seen by the ‘Other,’ providing thus a unique angle from which to approach the notion of globalization.
Roaming Images Routes raises questions of interpretation on ‘world pictures’ searching for and documenting the traces of various cultural genealogies and traditions through the eyes of contemporary artists who live and work at the Arabian peninsula and the broader area of the Middle East. How can we scrutinize issues of representation and orientalist stereotypes – meaning the Western view in regions of the Middle East but also received ideas and clichés of the Western world found in these societies? How can we scrutinize the Greek legacy of the image further elaborated in European Modernity and how this common cultural tradition has been dispersed in contemporary societies? What does it mean to reflect on the apparent ‘aniconic’ conventions of the Arab world and to negotiate such conventions with the means provided by contemporary art within its own traditions? What is the role of the powerful industries of the Imaginary (media of visuality and image-based tools of communication and spectacle) within any kind of universalist aspirations, which seem to rather assimilate than promote differences? How images can contribute today to an ideological and political understanding given the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests recently experienced in the Arab world known as Arab Spring? How is the Western world affected by these changes?
All these questions are scrutinized in one way or the other through the insightful work of artists who live and work in places where such conflictual situations arise. These artists are the appropriate discussion partners on seminal issues about both what we see and how we see it, and in effect about political issues that influence us. Without wanting to offer final or binding conclusions Roaming Images Routes at the MMCA creates a map of trajectories within the global flow of visual culture offering to spectators a navigation system of competence within current condition of a uniforming hybridization that endlessly multiplies not only images but also ideas and ways of living. Roaming Images Routes is indeed a bridging event that links ideas, practices and testimonies and brings together people worldwide. Not to forget also the hundreds of art professionals, artists, curators, scholars in several countries who embraced such a vision and worked for its realization and to whom I express my profound appreciation.

info: http://sites.google.com/site/roamingimages/

MAPPING THE ART SCENE IN SHARJAH AND THE UAE - Roaming Images (2011)

The exhibition of Roaming Images researches the various concepts of image along with the ideologies and geo-cultural climates that fostered them. The notion of image becomes therefore the universal vehicle that tells us the story of how we speak, how we think and even envision the future. This rubric moves us beyond the sterile adherence to the aesthetic creed of a homogenizing modernism and various postmodernisms often directed by archeological or ethnographic interests.

Main part of the exhibition, which will be presented at the MMCA during the 3^rd Thessaloniki Biennial is a series of projects that take place in various cities - stations, along the route linking Muscat (Oman) to Thessaloniki (Greece). These projects are planned and implemented by appointed with the participation of local artists and scholars, in collaboration with local institutions (Local Partners). Mapping the art scene in Sharjah and the UAE was the participation of the United Arab Emirates to the Roaming Images project. UAE's contribution consists of a workshop with the title Images Make Sense (organized by Giuseppe Moscatello and Sotirios Bahtsetzis) and a concluding exhibition at the Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis. The exhibition presents works by Ahmed Al Hamdi, Ammar Mohammed Al Attar, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, George Katodrytis, Khalil Abdulwahid, Maisoon Al Saleh, Mark Pilkington, Noor Al Suwaidi, Paolomaria, Tarek Al Ghoussein, Tim Kennedy, Tini Meyer, Zlatan Filipovic.

KUNSTHALLE ATHENA - THE BAR (2010)

During the 2010 IKT Congress in Athens (13-16 May) the Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar, located on an empty building in Metaxourgio Keramikos, the gallery area of downtown Athens, has been operating 24 hours a day.
The Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar is concieved as a place that fosters unofficial meetings while promoting an alternative way to experience art. The project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar was initiated out of the need to create an open space for creativity and dialogue between artists, curators, and other experts. It mediates between Athenian public and art practitioners and scholars from around the world. Curatorial activity in its initial understanding as study of the poetics and politics of display, becomes part of a living art event. Looking outside the “white box” the project functions as an alternative way to foster the often overlooked or naturalized task of curators as a creative-adaptive discipline. While being an offer for first-hand experience the project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar brings artists who link their activities with Athens together with inspired cultural mediators, caregivers and facilitators. The project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar hosts a variety of events related both to Athens and the emerging institution: Site-specific and new commissioned installations, public responsive performances, a media bar with books, magazines and blogs’s archive, screenings, dj-sets and musical performances come together with a DIY bar-restaurant within the specially designed interior of the venue and a taxi service! Current exhibition in the project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar has been created as an offer of artists, in order to put ideas into orbit and get caught up in perpetual motion.
The exhibition Kunsthalle Athena – The Bar, has been co-curated with Marina Fokidis with the participation of the following artists: Aids-3D, Alexandros Georgiou, Alexandros Mistriotis, Amateur Boyz, Andreas Angelidakis, Angelo Plessas, Annika Larsson, Christina Dimitriadis, Dimitra Vamiali, Forte, Gert & Uwe Tobias, Helga Wretman, Heracles Renieris, Jenny Marketou, Joulia Strauss, Juliette Bonneviot, Kostas Tsioukas, Lydia Dambassina, Manolis Baboussis, Marc Bijl, Mathieu Laurette, Olaf Nicolai, Panos Koutras, Pantelis Pantelopoulos, Paul Zografakis, Penelope Georgiou, Heinrich Spaeth, Rafael Rozendaal, Robert Pettena, Socratis Socratous, Warren Neidich, Ylva Ogland, Yorgos Sapountzis, Yorgos Stamkopoulos

www.kunsthalleathena.org

PAINT-ID (2009)

The exhibition “Paint-id” is a presentation of young and emerging artists in Greece focusing on current trends in painting. It comments on recent international developments in both a curatorial and theoretical level concerning the 'return' of the painting medium. Posed from this specific point of view a parallel reading of contemporary art production in Greece is suggested within an international framework. Images which are produced today by means of the painting-medium constitute an individual, definitely non-hegemonic category, a 'sub-species' of image together with the technologically produced photographic, cinema, or digital image, the other very many 'spatial' images, such as those in installation art, in architecture, in the theatre, and dance, or the 'pictographic images' of a music score or a text of poetry. All these, including painting, continue to attempt to give a reply to the question of how meaning is produced through them, and what is the significance of the visual today. The question about painting today comes at a moment in history when traditional philosophical 'aporias' are no longer put forward only as linguistic problems and queries about theories of knowledge, but as visual enigmas (visual turn). Through this exhibition, the following questions are posed: how far is the contemporary work of painting a comment on the historically determined relation between the image and the society that produces it? And how far is the painted image a space for re-thinking of contemporary visual culture in general? Can painting still articulate conceptual thinking in connection with major anthropological constituents or even current political issues? In this way, the title 'Paint-id' should be read as a question about the tabula rasa of painting, both as 'identity' and as 'Id', as we call, by an idiosyncratic of terminology, the psychoanalytically defined, ontological unconscious infrastructure of what we call the 'image', that sui generis entity which moves in the conceptual complex between subjective and collective, between imaginary and reasoned reality.

CONCEPTUAL OBSESSION – OBSESSIVE CONCEPTUALISM (2008)

Is there, then, another way of thinking besides verbal constructs? What are the limits of the physical and intellectual in a concern with art? Why does the Greek word eikastikos - 'visual artist' - mean one who can shape matter and at the same time one who at the same time possesses the capability of drawing conclusions?
The works of the artists taking part in the 'Conceptual Obsession - Obsessive Conceptualism' deal with the ways in which manual involvement with some material by means of the use of some system of organisation of it is an extremely delicate semantic tool. Obviously, after the destructuring of the authority of art the concept of the artistic gesture can only exist as a cliché. Contemporary artists are constantly redefining their relation with the handwork texture of their work, seen through specific contexts of signification. Whether it is the case of a kind of destructuring of the medium of painting, or of the conversion of ornaments into semantically delimited depictions, or of a changing of design into an art object, artists construct and extend in this way the bounds of thought. Differing methods, such as mechanical repetition during the construction process, precision in the manner of execution, absolute emphasis on the visual nature of the result, serial reproduction, the highlighting of detail, standardisation - these constitute different versions of the elevation of a physical occupation into an intellectual act.
Seen from a romantic viewpoint, artists often seem like creative individuals who are governed by a vague insuperable predisposition or tendency, a constant urge to 'make' something, a kind of psychological dependence on a state of ceaseless creativity. Often this is expressed as a preoccupation, obsession, monomania - almost a kind of inner compulsion. But isn't this stance a kind of communication which attempts to be - and perhaps is - as absolute, specific, and unequivocal as language itself? These works - typical of contemporary trends in art - explore how there can be a way of thinking beyond verbal narration or the expressiveness of the work of the hands.

WOMEN ONLY (2008)

If it is a common belief that we indeed live in a post-feminist era, in which both the transcendence of discriminations imposed historically as well as ideologically on the grounds of gendered identity (interpreted as the biological difference between men and women) and the subsequent establishment of an anthropologically multiple subjectivity (the basis of which was sexual orientation) now exist, then an exhibition that that only features works by female artists and brings to mind the “all-women-shows” of the ‘70s and ‘80s would seem divisive, retro, even futile. Feminism should be, however, understood as a social reality of discourses that continue to exist –even if they are differentiated in terms of the objectives, geographies and subjects to which they refer. Obviously, a contemporary art exhibition that looks into whether there is some “essence” that forms the constructed genre “women’s art” or the population category of Greek women artists, would unquestionably be a fallacy, if it did not take into consideration the research of the political uses (in the general meaning of the term) that set in motion essentialist invocations at every historical moment, as well as the mapping of cracks to the construction of any such essence.
Innovative efforts of artists –mainly women– sensitized in issues of gender and artworks of feminist orientation that have acted at the same time in other fronts changing thus art's landscape in the last four decades, have started to become recognized, via curated exhibitions and scholar research. Specifically, the most interesting developments in art in this era are precisely so interesting, partly due to the movements of feminist art. The exhibition “Women Only – Female Greek Artists from the Beltsios Collection”, one of the first shows featuring the work of Greek artists from 1965 to the present, speaks on these goals.

MY DEAR DEER (2008)

The group exhibition my dear deer presents works by five emerging international artists, whose work negotiates gender identity and desire. The works take a critical stance towards fixations, fetishizations and the ideological instrumentalization of «gendered» identity. These particular queer versions of lifestyle and practices of social interaction play the role of a critical gaze towards the hegemonic heteronormative discourse and the stereotypes, which tend to preclude every different articulation of gendered identity. The exhibition title functions as a playful and personal curatorial commentary on the endless search for the desirable "other", in the way in which this other is articulated in context of identity art. By highlighting next to gendered inscriptions the structural aspects of human condition, such as the vulnerable, the memory and the desire the works of the exhibition pose also a critical question about the current glorifying affirmation of identity. It is also a subtle critique of the obsessions and fetishizations of men and women who instrumentalize ideologically its gendered dimension. Queer aesthetics –however diverse they might be- consist of different versions of the erotic gaze, of the fetishizing desire, of the loss and at the same time the interventionist staging of the self in interaction with others. In this sense the visual iconography that includes, for example, a specific dress-code and style, or a specific mise-en-scene of the gaze in reference to gender identity are symptoms of the same law of desire. Nevertheless it is a subtle critique on the essence of "difference" of both nature and sensitivity of gay and lesbian desire.

OPEN PLAN (2007)

OPEN PLAN (2007) lists artists, who have been proposed by their galleries, either as emerging, mid-career stars, or established international trendsetters. They are given the opportunity to create a unique one-person show or project, some with big pieces and installations. This generous exposition of selected art works is presented in exclusively designed exhibition spaces at level D of the Helexpo Palace. Open Plan is organised this year by independent curators Cecilia Canziani and Sotirios Bahtsetzis, who have presented artists from 29 international galleries. Art Athina has stretched the limits of the classic art fair, offering a unique combination of events that balance a commercial and curated approach.
The new coordinators of the 13th Art Athina redesigned the exhibition while taking into consideration: the international environment, specific local particularities, the conditions of the broader geographical region of the South Eastern Mediterranean, the extensive mobilization of many new forces, and the realization that Art Athina is an important link within these forces.The Restart initiative of Art Athina has set the following goals:
to set new standards in the quality and selection of a small number of high profile and innovative international galleries who support contemporary and cutting edge projects; to create an event that will act as a forum for exhibition and exchange, introducing a host of curated exhibitions, performances and talks and to assist in the production of new art projects, and to mobilize the city’s art spaces and unique locations as part of an extended platform that will heighten the experiences and senses of all attending.














All images by Stephen Riolo



This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

DRAWING SCREEN (2006)

Drawing should not evidently be confused with the sketch or pre-sketch for a final- autonomous work- product (sculpture, painting, architectural); it rather constitutes a particular medium of considerable autonomy in regard to others. This exhibition, presents drawing or other works on drawing –such as video- in categories, by juxtaposing symmetrical entities (screen and fold, trace and vector, letter and outline). It suggests an understanding of drawing beyond its narrative characteristics or means of representation. In doing so, it does not constitute simply a visual essay on what ultimately «drawing» is, but explores what «drawing» can offer to the way we receive reality. Particularly, an exhibition with younger artists from Greece, a local scene which focuses especially on this medium offers possibilities to critically examine its capacities.