#6: Athens – Documenta 14@Benaki Museum Pireos street

May 24, 2017

Today EX-MÊKH’s fans from Holland arrived at the fair. We took the opportunity in the morning to visit another Documenta site and after the fair Artemis had arranged for everybody in the fair to have drinks and a meal together in Petralona, a busy neighbourhood with lots of bars and restaurants.
So in the morning we went to the Benaki annexe in Pireos street, another beautiful new building that normally houses modern Greek art. Now, Documenta occupies the ground floor with, to my opinion, the best part of Documenta in Athens.

The Benaki Museum Pireos Street Annexe

Hiwa K: One Room Appartment – 2017

Roee Rosen: Live and Die as Eva Braun – 1995-1997

A series of beautiful graphic art, drowned in German culture

The banners in the room show a monologue of Eva Braun and her love for Adolf Hitler

and how they commit suicide together

A great work of art, from collections in Israél

Nilima Sheikh has a number of painted canvases hanging from the ceiling under the title: “Each night put Kashmir in your dreams” – 2003-2014

On the back classical Hindu texts are printed

In the space it looks impressive

Aarin Rungjan: And then there were none, (Tomorrow we will become Thailand) – 2016 In this video a classical singer elegantly sings of horrible things, accompanied by a beautiful istrument of bamboe sticks

In the video and the accompanying paintings the artist juxtaposes two events: the Thammasat university Uprising in 1973 and the Polytechnic university uprising in Athens in 1973 Oral history in the video’s witness the happenings of the time.

Return to Khodurciur, Armenian Diary – 1974 Again Oral history about the happenings in Armenia: the father reads his diary from that time.

Congolese history by Tshimumba Kanda Matulu

It is a room filled with Congolese history, from the beginning until now

El Hadji Sy: la nouvelle Muséologie

André Pierre: Grand Bois

Myriam Cahn: ertasted (e.-arb)(touched – may 16, 1992)

R.H. Quaitman: Parthian Shot

R.H. Quaitman: Parthian Shot

Myriam Cahn

Myriam Kahn

Back on the fair we had a quick look at our work

and Geeta Rooparine came by with presents. She liked my textile texts, I got some beautiful silk threads from her and she showed me what she made of them!

KRAATZ changed their booth again, and this time their collaborators Stéphan Guéneau and Louise Crawford had arrived and immediately they added new work: a textwork

and these pictures (with the & from Isolde Nagel)

The pictures close up

And today again we couldn’t complain about the visitors

I took another round in the cellars, here with the VSVSVS

and the 24 hours project, completely different again!

At night we had a great dinner, because the next day would be the last day of the fair

Constantinos is very sure about something!

The Extra Muros crew rocks!

Shooting back at Artemis

Der Deutsch-Holländischer Tisch

And once more shooting back at Guillaume

Documenta 14

EX-MÊKH@ Platforms Project – Art Athina day 5: Platforms Project

15 mei 2014

In the course of this opening day I took a look at our fellow Platforms-exhibitors to see what might be interesting, these are some of the spaces/initiatives/collectives that I liked:

Marian Wijnvoord @ ATRANS from Berlin

Marian Wijnvoord @ ATRANS from Berlin

REM Brand Name project/Vehicle team a very active and succesful group of beautiful Greek girls doïng lottery

Totaldobze is our neighbour from Latvia, it is an art-centre that wants to be a platform for a number of disciplines to meet and expand borders

I loved this drawing for their Black Holes project

Explosion of Speech is a growing project for everybody to participate in a poem with burning questions

Les YperYper have a very effective way of using material

Parabola from Stockholm

Cowgirls in video and pictures at Microwesten from Germany

Jeroen Geel and Christian Herter at Alpineum Produzentengallery from Luzern

Christian Herter closeby

 

The muy sympatico booth had been covered with psychedelic wallpaper and this artist was great: Steph Yates at ED Video from Guelph, Canada

SUDLAB from the south of Italy, a great wall, I am sorry i didn’t speak with these guys

A great installation from a great artist, Maria Lianou, who collaborated with somebody whose name I didn’t get in this installation. The neonsign says breathe.

ABC-gallery from Russia with a groupshow

ABC-gallery from Russia also

Mind on matters is an interactive project by Andrea Hvistendahl from Stockholm who lets the public in diferent countries exchange sticks and stones with messages on them

And the sticks tend to look like this

I thought Dienstgebäude from Zürich was an interesting space with artists like this Andreas Marti

And Dutch artist Wink Witholt

Photo gallery Wien shows worm castings by Lea Titz

And a Roumanian Berserik at Lateral Artspace from Roumania

Orizontas Gegonoton uit Griekenland maakte mooi gebruik van de ruimte met veel kunstenaars

VSVSVS from Canada had a beautiful interactive project in which they kept peoples stuff for some time in exchange for a 3D-print designed by them. The booth eventually filled itself with a social sculpture.

A number of organiziations presented themselves in the Platforms-section among which Fulbright Greece. The Fulbright fundingpossibilities are well known and nowadays they try to raise their budget by asking artist who were funded to make an artists edition of a work.

The editions are presented on the fair, a very nice and appropriate initiative which makes a win win situation for artists and the Fulbrightorganization.

A kids corner is also organized with the help of artists who created examples of what one can doe with a shopping bag, later lots of kids would be cutting, gluing and painting bags.

 

Platform Projects