Platforms Project 2018 – day 4

May 20, 2018

After a walk in the park I joined Platforms Project again to finish our project. On this day a lot of performances took place of which I missed some, but I think I caught the most of it. Here’s an account of the last day:

 

The park near Syntagma was beautiful with the purple flowers falling

All of a sudden I was pointed at the Republic of Banania that was cutting a litttle book of mine to have a passport photo. Now someone is having a passport with a painting of Ezra Pound!

Across, around the corner someone installed this piece at the 24 hours project

This also is a nice casual intallation at Ormston House, from Ireland

From Canada AKA & UAS presented Walter Scott with great contemporary drawing.

Of course Guillaume Krick was present again, his platform Bureau d’Art et de Recherche presented his 3D work and that of Clara Juliane Glauert. Here Guillaume performs inspired by his sculpture!

The great Linda Weiss shows her work with Scotty from Berlin

And of course our friends from the Bcademie had their ways of making fun again, they organized a lottery: for € 2,- one could buy one of the obects on the floor. If it had a sticker on the back, you could take your pick…

out of these art works. I tried several times but was not lucky, though I would have liked very much to pick…

this V&B-piece,

This tongue in cheek work by Daan den Houter

or this great drawing by Lisa Blauwbroek

One of these by Tjalling Mulder would have been nice too, but alas….

Our friends of the Milena Project were present again

with this Utopia-project

and this example of “Belgicisme” that I liked a lot: pins sticking in the sleeves, letters as an invitation to shake hands by reading…

In the end I completed the Athens Diary, which makes for a fine set of drawings

The public wouldn’t stop gluing

And still some performances were due, here three ladies entered singing orthodox song while a performer creeped to the exit in sheets

like a snail trying to get out…

After Hours: I forgot to take a picture of the great piece of Gianin Conrad at Diensgebäude, probably because we saw it all the time

And I liked it every time!

Of Course Rosa Lux was also present with work by Tony Domingos

And this project was also worth wile: Danae Stratou at Vital Space created this beautiful site-specific installation of which documentation was presented.

The Milena Project showed this last minute performance by this classical dancer

Next to us was an installation by Angela Brisnovali at LaLa Artgroup from Greece that I liked more and more

Especially this work on paper

And finally our last collage was taken off the wall

And put into the pool

After which everything was displayed

The day and Platforms Project 2018 ended in music and dance, next morning early I would return home!

Platforms Project

EX-MÊKH

#2: Athens – Documenta 14 @ Athens Conservatoire – Platforms Project 2017

20 mei 2017

Today the Platforms Project opened for the public. Before I had some time to visit a venue of Documenta 14, The Athens Conservatoire or Odeion as Greeks call it. In the next reports I will show the works I thought worth while, in the end I shall try to eveluate Documenta as a whole.

At the entrance – David Lamelas: Time as Activity – a three channel live feed from resp. the German parliament, the Acropolis and the Greek Parliament.

Susan Hiller made a beautiful work, a sound-booth with recordings of vanished or endangered languages

Of course, in a conservatory, music can not be omitted. The Contemporary Music Research Centre, founded by Iannis Xenakis, Giannis Papaioannou and Stephanos Vassiliadis conducted research and engaged in educational projects as well as festivals and collaborations.

For instance Mycenae Polypoton, a site specific performance set in the ruins of Mycenae in 1978. It involved musicians, singers, sheperds and lit sheep as well as other recitals of movement and light.

On the occasion of Documenta 14 an old synthisizer was restored, the EMS Synthi 100, a rare analogue synthesizer built in London in 1971. Four compositions have been written for it to be played during Documenta 14.

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Passageways, Involuntary and the Sound of Crowded Spaces – 2015-2017

Pélagie Gbaguidi: The Missing Link, Decolonisation Education by mrs. Smiling Stone – 2017

Pélagie Gbaguidi: The Missing Link, Decolonisation Education by mrs. Smiling Stone – 2017

Guilermo Galindo: Score for Boca de la noche – 2016 (from the series “Border Canto’s”)

Guilermo Galindo: Score for Border Planetarium – 2016 (from the series “Border Canto’s”)

Kettly Noël: Strange Fruit

André du Colombier: Untitled

Peter Friedl: Report – 2016

Ganesh Haloi: Untitled – 2016

Ganesh Haloi: Untitled – 2016

Hiwa K: Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) – 2017 A video of a man escaping his country with a stick on his head with mirrors attached to it. He sees his surroundings and himself in the mirrors while we see him walking to his destiny. A voice-over relates his feelings in all this.

Hiwa K: Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue)-2017

After the Conservatory I walked to the venue where Platforms project was beïng held,. On the way I stopped at some of the places where small presentations in Documenta could be seen. The Nikos Hadjikyriakos- Ghika Museum, one of the four locations of the Benaki Museum is a beautiful house in the centre of the city. It shows biographies of well known writers, actors, poets, composers and painters and sculptors. The building used to be the house of Ghika, one of the famous Greek modernist painters, the two top floors show his living quarters and his studio. In between all this Documenta had placed work of forgotten painters. The paintings were not very interesting, apparently they were chosen because of their subjects: immigrants and other non Greek persons.

Beautiful sketches of renovation of The Niche, the 8th gymnasium school chapel of Athens

And this is the chapel, a nice modernist buiding

A picture of Greek poet Seferis together with Ezra Pound

This is the official document which was given to Giorgos Seferis when he won the Nobel Prize for litterature

36 Black and white pictures by Nikos Hadjikyriakos- Ghikawere added by Documenta

They show Greek living in the thirties

but you can recognise the painter in the structures and the compositions

The Numismatic Museum showed one work: that of Dan Peterman, who also shows at the EMST

It’s a bar of metal, the form suggests gold, from under the sea maybe?

Back in Platforms an impression of what is beïng shown by different artists initiatives:

Oversight EX-MÊKH booth

EX-MÊKH: Maarten Schepers

Maarten Schepers close up with his night-pictures of stars

Ellen Rodenberg: detail

Kees Koomen: oversight

KRAATZ is an interesting collaboration from Berlin with A-Trans’ Isolde Nagel, painter Marian Wijnvoord, musician Yorgos Dimitriadis, Stéphan Gueneau, Louise Crawford and philosopher Forbes Morlock. This installation was to change every day, though I found it interesting as it was

A-Trans showed photographs by Ekkehard Keintzel and pantings by Marian Wijnvoord

The combination of which worked out well

Moving landscapes by Marian Wijnvoord

Rosa Lux collaborated with other galleries again, this is Tiny Domingos at Beaston Projects

With slightly surrealistic pictures too

And this is Linda Weiss at Paper from UK

She had a beautiful presentation by the way, for instance with these Trump Tower grids!

National TV was present at the opening, interviewing Dutch globally based artist Willem-Jan Smit

The cellar was the real underground with nice work at ID:I

At Future Scenarios pictures were taken of the public

I don’t have the name of this collective, but it was a lively lot

At 24 hours project a daily change would take place also, I liked this as it was though!

With great graphic art up in the corner

and a protagonist on the side

Unnoticed Art presents an unnoticed exhibition, but it also executes performances of these artists regularly!

Unnoticed Art makes one curious for its intentions

but it appears to be a very intimate exhibition, featuring the works of EX-MÊKH-members

This is the wall in the cellar where the Lo and Behold shows their project, EX-MÊKH is presented in a nice context

After the opening of Platforms drinks in a local bar. On the way there we passed the Panathinaikos stadium, covered with grafitti!

Platforms Project 2017

Documenta 14

 

The Act of Painting (Beïng the Universe)

13 december 2016

André Kruysen: Grillo – 2013

Rosa Lux

Platform Project & Art Athina 2016

May 27, 2016

In spite of the crisis atmosphere in Athens and the refugee-problems that haunt the country the Athens artfair took place again this year. The Taekwondo Stadium had been occupied with refugees in winter during heavy rains which resulted in a lot of problems.  Nevertheless, the fair continued but the big galleries in Greece didn’t show up and the galleries that did show up were very conservative in their choice of artists. The Platform Project on the other hand was very interesting this year. It is always worth to visit but now the side show for non-commercial art platforms showed great art and awareness of the human and the political situation which in some cases led to  moving art works.

Look at the fair from the platforms

Derek Liddington at 8Eleven, a very interesting sculptor. these are studies after an Elsworth Kelly drawing

This video was shot by Liddington, having four actors making a pillar of clay and creating a tension between disciplines

 

This was an ongoing performance in 8eleven in which a dancer would reenact the choreography “Ode” which was executed by les Ballets Russes in 1913. The floor on which the dancer moved was a square meter of clay

I found this work very moving: in an inter-active work, Navine Khan Dossos tries to paint the 2000 people that have sought refuge in the Taekwondo Stadium last winter. Visitors and colleagues are invited to contribute as the artist will continue to paint until the end of the fair.

This beautiful Painting has been made by an icon-painter for Kallio Kunsthalle (FI), following the text that Petri Saariko had prepared.

Andreas Martí installed this drawing installation at Dienstgebäude

It is continuing to draw during the fair

This wall sculpture of Bettina Diel could also be seen at Diensgebäude

From Nantes (FR) came Extra Muros in which these wall sculptures by Romain Rimbaud were shown

Interesting painting at Foss (GR)

A short visit to the real fair: here a photograph by Sarah Lucas

Nice political drawings by Tasos Pavlopoulos

Collage by Maria Ikonomoupoulou

who also made beautiful embroideries on newspaper, shown at Mulier Mulier

Where also work of the painter Guy van Bossche was shown

I rather liked these collages because of the use of material. made by Nikos Varitymiadis

Taubert Contemporary showed an artist with over-all design: Lars Arrhenius

Curator of Platform Projects, the wonderful Artemis Potamianou, an artist also, showed at the floor of the fair

Kallio Kunsthalle showed performance “about the self-determination of women”

At MUU (F) the performance artist Helinä Hukkataival showed a very sensitive performance

resulting in a beautiful series of personae

From the Netherlands came Bcademie, a post-graduate training for artists (after A you have to say B). Here initiators Alex Jacobs and Daan den Houter talk with their students, of which six were doïng performances durig the fair. One for a Euro!

The students found props in Athens and used those to arrange their space

They proved quite popular, here Elsemarijn Bruijs working on chewing gum

The shift was together with Philippa Driest

Who showed pictures of urban places accompanied by sounds of airplanes

AKA artist run from Saskatchewanm, Canada with sculpture of Svea Ferguson

Super 8 video by Leslie Supnet

and Lori Blondeau who researches diverse persona’s

The Lo and Behold (GR) wants to fertilise the soil in “Bureau of Soil making” by Yiannis Hiridoglou

From Boston (USA) the Museum of Contemporary Cuts with heavy conceptual work with a direct approach

Which works rather good I think

Then an installation of Amiraly from Parking Gallery/New media Society from Iran, a presentation which is well worked out

Cut the Fence, a project of Copa & Sordes: the 657 meter long fence of a Swiss refugee camp is transformed in to the same length of African damask fabric with fence pattern: everybody who cuts a piece of it contributes to the destruction of the fence

Groupshow at SCI (UK) with very nice works, some fresh from the boats coming to Greece

Ed video: always interesting video-stuff, here by Iris Fraser and David Hanes

Foreign Affairs, A beautiful collaboration by Bella Easton, Tiny Dominguez and Julia Riddlough of resp. Beaston projects, Rosa Lux and A Brooks Art

The beauty of statistics, by Tiny Dominguez

In the mean while the Capacity-project of Navine Khan Dossos is a large succes

 

The refugee-camp is turning in a large field of flowers!

At A-Trans beautiful work on paper by Marian Wijnvoord

Who also burns down the Netherlands in her Photo-collages

The line in Andreas Martí’s installation is lengthening

Bcademy’s students don’t stop performing, here Maud van den Beuken moves sand

from stage to visitor

and Casper Braat plans a make-over for your humble reporter

Various Artists from Belgium, a research in shit which Belgians find interesting in general

Trying to find the pearls which are being digested by test-persons

And also the deterioration of Bonsai-trees under water is a process that results in esthetic pleasures under the name Agua con Gaz

The very big collective EN-FLO (GR) installed suit-cases with fillings

And then there is the very interesting Milena Principle, showing projects that relate to our own activities. Action in public space about silence and slowness.

In Venice

And Athens, we will hear more from them!

Last but certainly not least Kunstenaarsinitiatief Elders from Den Haag (NL), here an expanding painting by Lucius Pax

Painting by Liesbeth Bosch

And surprising ceramics by Corine Barendregt

Art Athina 2016