OPENING, REMAP 4: ART IN TURBULENT TIMES...
“Since Plato it has been argued that ‘madness’ is twinned with creative
genius, that the agonies we now understand as depression and the
turbulence we now recognize as mania are part of a Faustian bargain with
inspiration”. Deborah Stone was right! The thing is… it’s difficult
enough to live with it. Why do we need to see it, repeatedly, door after
door, and gallery to gallery…more or less. Maybe, I just had a creepy
summer. But then, today while waiting for coffee, I just overhead 2
girls discussing about ReMap 4.“All that depression… Why?”. I am just
quoting here. ..."Now I can't see that crisis any longer means a climax…
Since our lives, both by nature and by the newspapers are so full of
crises that one is no longer aware of it, then it is clear that life
(and death) goes on regardless…".—Merce Cunningham.
If only I could say the same about art…
ReMap 4, takes place from the 8th to the 30th of September in the
historical Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio area in the Athens City center, and
transforms the area into a unique meeting point for contemporary art.
There were, of course, some brilliant artworks!
SHOW: Blind Adam, Artist: Thanos Kyriakides
“Melting Safety” a monumental sculpture is hanging in the center of the
space. Part safety net, part floating demon the long threads of knotted
yarn that constitute the work come together in an imposing black mass.
Black wool yarn Blind Adam creates a hand knotted universe of thread. A
method that begun mechanically in 2007, has now evolved into a coherent
art practice, which incorporates wall based works, sculptures and
installations, presented for the first time as a solo exhibition. The
gallery’s basement floor is transformed into an ancient temple
consisting of twenty-four Doric columns. Each one of them an ethereal
elegant structure of black yarn, like monuments of transcendental
meditation or rather the ghostly exoskeletons of columns, they highlight
the absence of volume. They are the impressions of columns, drawn from
the artist’s memory. Against the gallery’s white walls, the sculptures
resemble drawings with black pen on paper that have come to life to
claim a three-dimensional existence.
http://www.eternal-optimist.com/section/art/opening-remap-4-art-turbulent-times |