Summer holidays: DESTE, Athens will remain closed between Aug. 7 and Aug. 15. We hope you have a lovely summer!
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Taking as its starting point an immersive installation with works by Urs Fischer and placing it in dialogue with the work of twenty-one Greek and Cypriot artists of various generations and modalities, Anti-Structure explores the far-fetched realm of fine lines between order and chaos, stasis and flux, structure and fragility.
Coined in 1969 by cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983), “anti-structure” is a study of the state of mental and spiritual limbo that is characteristic of the second stage—the liminal stage—of any rite of passage, when the novitiate is neither here nor there but, betwixt and between, remains enveloped in abiding upheaval and disarray and a preternatural void. Anti-structure thus describes a stage of perpetual transformation characterized by moments of dissolution where “structural hierarchies are flattened or inverted.” Whereas the dominant ideology du jour was that any such breakdown would result in anomie and angst, Turner recognized that in times of great happenstance, culture in fact reboots itself and new symbols, models, and paradigms arise.
It is not unusual to find such pockets of clandestine novelty simmering deep in the underground, the pregnant margins of normative order. It is in these lands of strangers and exiles, that one finds fertile ground for radical thought and very strange ideas. It is these ideas cultivated in the fringes of institutionalized etiquette that bring forth novel ways of dress, posture, and expression, attitudes that when fully formed feed back into the system to either break or make the mainstream.
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Special thanks to all the lenders of the exhibition: the Onassis Foundation; the National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum; the Takis Foundation-Research Center for the Art & the Sciences; the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST); the T. Ch. Zenetos Archive; the Corfu General Hospital; the J. Patrick Collins Collection, Dallas, TX; Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Kalfayan Galleries; The Breeder Gallery, Athens; Kelly Intzides; as well as the lenders who wish to remain anonymous and all the artists who have kindly contributed artworks to the exhibition.
* In accordance with the Covid-19 public health & safety guidelines, there will be no opening event
** Visitors are required to wear a mask for the duration of their visit and adhere to social distancing regulations. Please note that there will be a limited number of visitors allowed in the space at a time
Featured image: Giorgos Tourkovasilis, Lambros (R. R. Hearse) with his friend Nancy, 1984 (detail) | Courtesy of the artist
