The show is set to explore matters of form, volume and materials, through the creative dialogue of architecture and sculpture. As the inaugural exhibition, Props, Events and Encounters honors the unique heritage of this iconic building, while simultaneously alluding towards its future role as a new centre for cultural activity within Athens.
Volume One - Props, Events and Encounters is an international group exhibition that explores ‘the triumphant return to theatricality’ within contemporary sculptural practices. Fourteen international artists present existing and newly commissioned works within a specially conceived installation. In his seminal 1967 essay ‘Art and Objecthood’, Michael Fried criticized the overt theatricality of minimalist sculpture, which replaced the ‘presentence’ of compositional sculpture with the staging of the viewer as performer. Props, Events and Encounters presents a selection of works, which reevaluates this argument within the context of current sculptural production.
The selected works are imbued with a theatrical status and represent complex systems of rhetoric, which are enlivened and expanded through the engagement of the viewer. Through this independent agency we see a move away from contemplative engagements with form and space and instead encounter multiple narratives and dialogues between the object, viewer and context.
Artists//
Athanasios Argianas, Jonathan Baldock (http://jonathan-baldock.com/),
Hannah Barton & Xavier Poultney,
Matthew Coombes (http://www.matthewcoombes.net/),
Michael Dean (http://www.michaeldean.net/),
Marcus Foster (http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=508695&CategoryID=36765),
Spiros Hatdjidjanos (http://www.spiroshadjidjanos.net/),
Andy Holden (http://www.andyholdenartist.com/),
Nick Hornby (www.nickhornby.com), Mimi Norrgren (http://test.myartspace.com/miminorrgren/),
Conrad Shawcross (http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/_13/),
Franz Erhard Walther (http://www.franz-erhard-walther.com/),
Franz West (www.bernier-eliades.gr) (http://www.gagosian.com/artists/franz-west/)
