Originally presented at the International Cultural Centre of Antwerp, Belgium as part of Europalia ’82: Greece, Emerging Images focuses on how historical knowledge and thought are used as approaches to the creation of contemporary artworks. Curated by Efi Strousa, the show features the work of ten, young Greek artists throughout the lobby and elevators of the Hotel Athenaeum Intercontinental that take on the forms of large-scale installations, sculptures, and performances.
The works in Emerging Images dominate and shape the surrounding space; the odor of rotting apples, the decaying remnants of Leda Papaconstantinou’s performance, continuously perfume the grounds of the hotel lobby; painted plastic sheets cover the entire surface of the pool’s water in the performance piece by Costas Varotsos; Diohandi’s gigantic totem poles take over the foyer at the bottom of the escalators while strange figures forming part of a striking, large scale installation by art duo Zouboulis-Grekou command the space at the hotel entrance. Representing a particular aspect of the Greek artistic production today, the works seek to overcome the immeasurable void created by the crisis of art values and not to merely represent it by violently attacking the object of art with an aggressive or negative existential gesture. References to legible figures and symbols of the artistic repertory are made, but only so as to widen the works’ straight historical context and extend their significance as traces of cultural existence in evolution and transformation.
Sponsored by the Athenaeum Intercontinental Hotel, Athens.
