A Smashing Success:
The Athens Biennial is Extended
Marc
Bijl, Fundaments of Culture: The Pentagram, 2007
Courtesy:
The Breeder, Athens
The
1st Athens
Biennial has been so well received by audiences and critics that the
organizers have decided to extend the art exhibition until December 2,
2007. The three curators - Xenia
Kalpaktsoglou, the director of the Deste
Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art, the artist Poka-Yio,
and the critic Augustine Zenakos
- worked for two years to realize the ambitious project. Deutsche
Bank is the main sponsor of the event. In addition to strengthening
the local art scene, the organizers seek to create an international forum
for discussion and exchange. Thus, Athens has entered a network with the
Biennials in Lyon and Istanbul
to realize joint projects.
John
Bock, Lütte mit Rucola, 2006
Courtesy:
Klosterfelde, Berlin; Anton Kern, New York
On account of the devastating forest fires that threatened
the Greek capital this summer, the motto of the main Biennial show, Destroy
Athens, takes on additional explosive power. The exhibition makers
were not talking about real destruction, of course. They chose the
provocative slogan to refer to the leitfmotif of the presentation, an
examination of national stereotypes with Athens as the ancient "cradle of
democracy" and the modern image of the city as a retsina paradise and smog
hell.
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Ioannis Savvidis, Athenscope, 2007
Courtesy
of the artist
Technopolis,
a gas works from the 19th century which is now used for cultural events,
is an ideal venue for the exhibition, to which 60 international artists
were invited. They include Charles
Avery, John
Bock, and Olaf
Nicolai, who are represented in the Deutsche Bank Collection, as well
as Julian Rosefeldt, who
opened Destroy Athens with his highly charged contribution
"Detonation Deutschland". The video installation, which Rosenfeldt
executed in collaboration with Piero
Steinle, shows buildings being razed in postwar Germany in an attempt
to radically eradicate the past. The winding art course leads through
narrow aisles and giant factory halls, past batteries of old ovens between
which the young New York star Terence
Koh placed blackened divine figures quoting ancient sculptures.
assume
vivid astro focus,
Afovi
Vevilosi Anekpliroton Fantasioseon, 2007
Courtesy:
Peres Projects, Los Angeles / Berlin
The Greek artist Ioannis
Savvidis shows plans and buildings of a fictive, real-socialist
Athens, including the Berlin Wall. And he plays through ideas of what the
metropolis would look like if Corinth had been selected as the capital of
Greece. The young Athenian Stelios
Faitakis uses an entire room for his project. With his shiny gold
murals (citing Street Art, Byzantine
icon painting, and Gustav
Klimt), he transformed the space into a kind of chapel. While bombers
circle over the Acropolis, Socrates
and orthodox holy men encounter demonstrators, policemen, and terrorists
here. It is at once an aesthetic and subversive commentary on media
pictures and national clichés which simultaneously illustrates the motto
of the exhibition.
A. D.
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