Local Warming
AFTER A YEARLONG HIATUS, the eighteenth Art-Athina hit the ground
running on the evening of Thursday, May 16, and the former Olympic “Tae
Kwon Do” Pavilion was packed with enthusiastic party people. The fair
had a more national flavor than ever this year under its new director,
Alexis Caniaris, the son of recently deceased artist Vlassis Caniaris,
whose iconic modern work has recently found great success on the
international market. Of the very few foreign galleries exhibiting, most
were Greek-owned. The Breeder gallery was dealing with the perceived
drop in the market by selling fantastic multiples by artists like
Stelios Faitakis, Jannis Varelas, and Andreas Angelidakis at
crisis-appropriate prices. “Nobody wants to come here now, but I have
already met three interested billionaire collectors today. And if Greeks
like you they introduce you to their billionaire friends,” raved
Cologne dealer Mirko Mayer, a seven-time exhibitor. “That is what nobody
knows: There are at least one-hundred billionaires collecting here.”
Most international collectors were delayed several hours due to a union
strike, a de rigueur mode of arrival in contemporary Greece.
In lieu of minimal foreign participation, Greek galleries came out of
the woodwork, making the fair an excellent snapshot of the country’s
current art production and market. “It is important to support the
system by being here,” said dealer Eleni Koroneou. Glaring exceptions
were Kappatos Gallery, whose booth was mysteriously empty, and
Bernier/Eliades. Getting a bad case of agoraphobia among the swarmed
dealer booths, on the main floor, I headed upstairs to check out the
forty-six international artist-run “Platforms,” invited by curator
Artemis Potamianou to present their projects. Michalis Adamis’s
mechanical mice running around the floors were amusing likenesses of the
frenetic fairgoers below. Sweden’s Museum of Forgetting showcased work
by artists Iman Issa, Daniela Ortiz, and Núria Güell. The latter two
focused on immigration issues in compelling videos: In Forcible Drugging
to Deport, Ortiz reads the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement while being
injected with sedatives used forcibly by US border guards; Humanitarian
Aid documents Güell’s interview with a prospective Cuban spouse, who had
won the chance to marry her and obtain a Spanish visa by submitting
love letters, which were displayed on the wall.
It was impossible to miss the exuberant activities of the DaDa Da
restaurant, a Greek-Austrian collaboration where artist Albert Mayr was
waving a skillet and raving nonsense while Lucas Willmann tenderized
pink fillets for Wiener schnitzel. “This is Viennese Actionism light,”
quipped critic Sotirios Bahtsetzis. Artist Natasha Papadopoulos added,
“But here there are hungry Greeks waiting!” On a table with a rotating
Sacher tort by Hélène van Duijne, a sign carried the overwhelming
spirit: FUCK ART, LET’S EAT SOUVLAKI. An insistent electronic beat and
pulsating light emanated from the next booth, the American College of
Greece’s “Athens/Urgent,” while hooded performer Manos Tsatiris stood
against the wall with his hands tied, perhaps a metaphor for the current
Athenian exigency. “This is not the kind of art fair scene we are used
to,” said the Economou Collection’s Annie-Claire Geisinger, watching the
madness.
I was lucky enough to escape before the crowds, nevertheless
encountering the beginnings of a growing traffic jam at the exit on our
way to the Kunsthalle Athena, in the hip and edgy Metaxourgeio quarter.
We heard nobody had yet arrived for the party, so we stopped at The
Friends taverna to dine among the chilled-out chess players and
neighborhood dogs. Around midnight we headed to the opening of “This
Must Be the Place,” with shows by Katerina Kana, Petros Touloudis, and
Thanos Kyriakides. The decadent atmosphere of the Kunsthalle is
inevitably part of the art, and Kyriakides had fashioned striking
constructions of black yarn, one a virtual column, throughout the rooms.
The party moved from there onto the terrace, where people were huddled
in groups under the stars among the sympathetic ruins of past
installations.
The fair was pleasantly tranquil the next day, so I started at a panel
organized by Marina Fokidis, where Filipa Ramos spoke about UFOs and
recreating the feeling of being someplace in a particular moment through
contemporary technology, citing the absurdity today of Saint
Augustine’s distraction by a little bird outside his writing studio.
Next I took in the exhibition “Paradise Lost,” where curator Potamianou
had skillfully integrated works of participating galleries. A highlight
was Panos Tsagaris’s I Have Carried Away the Darkness by My Strength,
the text inscribed in 23kt gold on a digital print of his arm; the
haunting coda a beautiful girl passing in a car, in Roderik Henderson’s
photograph Cassandra.
Down on the floor, the dealers seemed pleased, particularly given
dismal expectations, having already sold a great deal at the preview.
Young Rotterdam-based gallery Joey Ramone had sold sculptures by Fotini
Gouseti to English and Belgian collectors; dealer Erik Mulier had also
sold some work to Belgians. Marc Van den Hende said he had bought a
triptych by Eirene Efstathiou and was considering a Vlassis Caniaris
piece from the 1970s. “I saw some surprises—young Greek artists I did
not know—and great new galleries, like Elika and CAN,” Dutch collector
Anne-Marie Ros said. By the end of the day, Dimitra and Sofia Vamiali
reported that they had not seen one Greek collector, although another
reported a Dakis Joannou sighting.
That evening at the Cypriot collector’s house, Joannou greeted us only
in effigy: a sculpture by Paweł Althamer portraying him as an Indian
chief, accompanied by a host of other art stars like Jeff Koons and
Massimiliano Gioni caricatured all in white. We then embarked to the
DESTE Foundation for a tour of “The System of Objects,” where curator
Andreas Angelidakis led us around the labyrinthine gathering of objects
raided from Joannou’s closets. It was definitely all about spectacle:
like an alter ego of the collector’s house, the incredible array of
furniture, artworks, dusty old dolls, and other strange objects were
arranged throughout the deconstructed space—meandering into the guts of
the building, and allowing different views on various rooms and exposing
remnants of previous exhibitions. “This is how I felt the first time I
went to Saatchi,” an artist said. “Like I was inside a funhouse.”
We moved on to the northern suburb of Ekali, where collector Nineta
Vafeia was hosting a dinner in her stunning and sprawling Modernist
villa. The collection, mostly large-scale paintings and photographs,
were hung throughout the home and in a dedicated building across from a
pool, somehow feeling like both a museum and home at once. A discreet
corner in the dining room was dedicated to paintings by the grandmother
and photos of the children. “Greek people are so nice,” collector
Yannicke De Smedt commented over dinner. “We have been coming for years
and have seen some great collections.” After dinner Vafeia relieved the
pianist with renditions of “Strangers in the Night” and a tango standard
while we lounged on giant cushions. These days there are benefits of a
fair being less international and more a reflection of the local milieu.
“We are entering an era of post-globalization,” said the Biennial
Foundation’s Marieke Van Hal, “and places are trying to define their
identities again.”
http://www.artforum.com/diary/id=41458
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