Greek Pavilion
52nd International Art Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia
“THE END”
June 10-November 21, 2007 /
special cocktail preview: June 8, 17.00 19.00 /
official inauguration: June 10, 12.00
Artist: Nikos Alexiou
Commissioner/Curator: Yorgos Tzirtzilakis
Assistant Curator: Nadja Argyropoulou
Organization: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Directorate of Visual Arts, Department for the promotion of Contemporary Art Greek Pavilion location: Giardini (next to the new entrance, Santa Elena vaporetto stop)
Nikos Alexiou will present the installation, The End, in the Greek Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition in Venice. The work is a modular installation inspired by the floor mosaic in the Catholicon of the Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos (10th-11th c. AD).
The Greek pavilion will hold a launch event on 8th June, 5-7pm (by invitation)
Curator Yorgos Tzirtzilakis comments:
“The Greek participation in the 52nd Biennale of Venice focuses on the possibilities of diversity, and the critical re-negotiation of the concepts of identity. Further, through the sensory materiality and multiplicity of artistic practices, and the repetition of the same, revealing and constructing the different a new condition of handicraft will be described and depicted.
A close relationship has always existed in non-Western and Eastern cultures in terms the affiliation of aesthetic and religious techniques and practices of repetition for the achievement of ecstasy. Nikos Alexiou’s digital and material appropriation of the monastery mosaic sketches a visual path that suggests a broader change in the way that many have tried to describe and employ these practices in recent years. Alexiou’s installation is a four-piece modular work that consists of an interchangeable projection onto a large screen, paper cut-outs, prints and a table with elaborated paper rests; all as separate elements that will carry the traces of this work’s makings and marked with the memory of previous works. It is inspired by the cosmology of the floor mosaic of Iviron monastery at Mt Athos. Through the precision and intricacy of this work, Alexiou attempts to examine the aura of emotions that surround the mysteries of the mosaic.
Nikos Alexiou comments:
“The work for the Biennale, which I’ve called The End, carries everything I’ve worked on all these years, from the ’80s and a little earlier to this day. All references in my work, from rainbows, lights and galaxies to marble, prisms and the psychedelic stuff, are all in it.”
About The End
Alexiou made frequent visits to Mount Athos and has been hosted at Iviron Monastery at various times from 1995 to date, where he got to know the spirituality, the quickening of the soul and the strange interpersonal experiences of coexisting in monastic communal life. During this time, after much copying and redesigning of the mosaic he attempted to understand the mysteries it contains as he sought its semantic structure as well as its vortex. One could describe this mobile immobility of this floor as a composite ideogram, a symbolically packed system, the kind of condensing of the Whole that we call data storage today.
Nikos Alexiou has participated in the 23rd Biennale of Alexandria (2005), in the Outlook and Athens by Art exhibitions (2004 Athens Olympic Games), Breakthrough! Greece 2004 (Sala Alcala 31, Madrid, Spain), in Free Transit (?) (2003 Zappeion, Greek Presidency of the EU), DESTE Prize 2003 (DESTE foundation, Greece), et.al.
Sponsors:
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation & The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation
With the support of:
Minoan Lines & Boutari
For more information on Nikos Alexiou and the Greek Pavilion in Venice, as well as high resolution visuals, please refer to www.nikosalexiou.com
For Media enquiries, please contact:
Katie Taylor at Brunswick Arts on 44 (0) 207 936 1280; ktaylor@brunswickgroup.com
Alexandros J. Stanas at D.ART on 30 210 3821222 ; astanas@d-art.gr
Or coordinator Marina Vranopoulou, vranopoulou@gmail.com
