Georgia Sagri and I

Portikus is pleased to announce the exhibition Georgia Sagri and I.

Georgia Sagri and I is a playlist, a perspective on retrospective and an exhibition of exhibiting, an institution without confines.

For the first time, sculptures, video works and performances from the last ten years of Georgia Sagri’s multidisciplinary oeuvre come together. Their display is treated as a score that decides on tempo, duration, entry and exit. Screenscapes, landscapes, soundscapes are all part of it, as are performances, concerts, workshops and their organizing modes.

The exhibition began during the conversation between artist and curator on the Georgia Sagri Georgia Sagri exhibition at Kunstverein Braunschweig, where the symmetry of the architecture allowed the works to be accommodated and exist at ease in their module state. 

For Sagri module conveys the idea of the conceived possibilities of an object’s multiple meanings in space and time’s (gravity and temperature) impact.

In rejecting the singular by the act of doubling, Sagri also rejects the hierarchies between object and subject with their spatial determinations. The white cube of Portikus however is in an ambiguous state, it can be many and is one. Its history and structure makes it an exhibition space per se, suspending other determinations. Georgia Sagri and I allows cracks and syncopations on this premises through the means of her works’ thought experiments.

On Friday, April 6, Georgia Sagri and Christina Lehnert met the students at the Städelschule and started to play the exhibition’s score. In this continuum, musician friends, her brother poet and activist, and writers are some of the references of the artist’s home town Athens, who bring more affects in the exhibition. Georgia Sagri’s performances are endurance in loop, where repetitions give space and time for contemplation. Hence, the exhibition is a tool for different bodies to use Portikus as a concert hall, an exhibition space, a memory bank and an art school.

Playlist

April 6, 3pm: Meeting with the students, Aula, Städelschule 
April 20, 7pm: Opening, Portikus
April 20, 8pm: Jay Glass Dubs, Concert, Portikus
April 21, 3-6pm: The Invisible Ones (2008/2018), Performance, Portikus
April 24, 11am-6pm: Workshop on Dynamis, Städelschule 
May 5, 9pm: Guided Tour, Portikus
May 12, 3pm: Christos Chondropolous, Concert, Portikus
May 14–15, Do Jaguar (2009/2018), Installation, Städelschule 
May 16, 9am-5pm: Do Jaguar (2009/2018), Performance, Städelschule
May 16, 5pm: Conversation on Do Jaguar, Städelschule
May 29, 7pm: Lecture, Städelschule 
June, 2, 8pm: Tasos Sagris & Whodoes, Poetry reading and electronics, Portikus
June 10, 3pm: Hymbro (2008/2018), Performance, Portikus
June 15, 7pm: Minimaximum, Concert, Portikus

On the occasion of the exhibitions at Portikus and Kunstverein Braunschweig a catalogue will be published by Sternberg Press with essays by Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Daniel Horn, Ruba Katrib, Diego Singh, Steven Squibb and Monika Szczukowska, along with a discussion between Georgia Sagri, John Kelsey and Bettina Funcke, and Georgia Sagri and Silvia Federici.

Georgia Sagri (b. 1979, Athens, Greece) lives and works in Athens and New York. Her works have been shown in numerous international exhibitions, such as: Kunstverein Braunschweig (2017), documenta 14, Kassel and Athens (2017); Manifesta 11, Zürich (2016); at the Sculpture Center, New York (2015); at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); at the Museum for Modern Art, Warsaw (2014 and 2015), at Kunsthalle Basel (2014), as well as the 14th Istanbul Biennale (2015), the Lyon Biennale (2013), and the Whitney Biennale, New York (2012).
 
In 2009 she founded the Audio-Magazine FORTÉ as well as the curatorial project SALOON, and in 2014 she initiated the semi-public space ‘ΥΛΗ[matter]HYLE (hyle.gr) in Athens.

The exhibition at Portikus was made possible with the financial support of Städelschule Portikus e.V. and Graf von Westphalen.

Director: Philippe Pirotte
Curator: Christina Lehnert