Jannis Kounellis, Installation view, Untitled work
The Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens
Photograph by Katy Hamer, 2012

Jannis Kounellis was born in Piraeus, Greece in 1936. He studied fine art in Athens until 1956 when he moved to Rome to attend the Accademia di Belle Arti. Influenced by several other important artists of the time, he was originally inspired by Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Jackson Pollack and Franz Kline. However, by 1963, Kounellis was less interested in traditional applications including painting and began thinking in a more sculptural way, even using live animals in his exhibitions. Materials, especially those referring to the human experience became one of the most important elements of his visual oeuvre. This being said, it was in 1967 when Kounellis was first included in an exhibition in Genoa titled Arte Povera, a term that was originally conceived by Italian curator Germano Celant. Many artists of the time, specifically in Italy, were making anti-establishment artworks, with a desire to pull art off the walls and into the space. Each artist from the movement had a specific agenda, but also a connective element to the others involved which was to focus on humanity, dwelling space, mathematics of nature, and mediums of impermanence. Other artists involved in Arte Povera of the time included Mario Merz, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Giuseppe Penone, and Alighiero Boetti, to name a few. Within the last year, Arte Povera has had a resurgence of global appreciation and exhibitions have occurred and are currently taking place celebrating the movement which was and is so relevant and influential to contemporary art in venues in New York such as the Museum of Modern Art (Alighiero Boetti), Marianne Boesky & Pace Gallery (Pier Paolo Calzolari), Marianne Goodman (Guiseppe Penone) and now the unique Greek national of the group is being shown in his home country at the Museum of Cycladic Art, in Athens, Greece. It’s stated that Kounellis originally started using burlap as a visual homage to artist Alberto Burri. However, rather than use the burlap stretched as canvas in frames, he uses the substance in strips wrapped around other materials and also in bag format. It is in this latter usage that we come across entering the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.

Jannis Kounellis, Installation view, Untitled work
The Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens
Photograph by Katy Hamer, 2012

Burlap is one of the many natural materials that Kounellis has used quite often in his career. Here it is filled with charcoal, top folded over and in circular formation. In the first gallery to the right of the entrance, one will discover the bags surrounding a large pile of eyeglasses. Plastic and metal frames merge into one as the glass and plastic lenses glimmer under the fluorescent lighting.  His work has such a strong human presence, without representing an iota of human form. The lyricism is quietly poetic and carries an emotional strength far more cunning in its subtlety than if outright didactic.

Walking through the two story exhibition there is a duality hanging invisibly in the air; a presence of melancholia and hope. Kounellis hasn’t exhibited in Greece since 2004 and even though he originally returned to the country in 1977 for exhibition purposes, he didn’t stay and returned shortly thereafter to Italy. However the artist had a retrospective of his works in Greece in 1994 sponsored by the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation. The show took place on the cargo ship “Ionion”, floating on the sea and very much in touch with Kounellis’ own family history and a working class Greece. From curator Denys Zacharopoulos, Artistic Director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Arts, Thessaloniki:

“The presence of Kounellis’s exhibition in the Stathatos Manion, apart from referencing the fundamental principle of the artistic gesture’s emancipation into free work and logos, also underscores the more recent history. His work comes to stand upright in the rooms of a historical building which rose together with the Greek bourgeoisie’s dream of turning Athens into a city worthy of the principles of European civilization and the values of Enlightenment.”

At a time when Greece is struggling with national debt and upcoming deadlines, there is looming doubt that they will be able to meet bond payment of €3.26 billion by August 20th unless they receive the next installment of bailout money ~from Forbes.com and Trade the News.  Jannis Kounellis left Greece for reasons that involved his career and his own personal desire for success. He may have found a home in Italy, but this exhibition in Athens, proves that much of his sensibility is derived from somewhere deeper than physical place, it is emerging from a state of mysticism and blood. It is a rooted, powerful, irreproachable and purposeful, a characteristic that we all carry and leads each and every one of us to where we are in the present, and that is the past. Kounellis is undeniably self aware and it is through this self awareness that he is able to communicate to the “every” man. His work is specific to history and all that have come before, but at the same time presents a universal meaning and/or understanding of our mortal existence, the relationships we share amongst ourselves, our communities, our families and our countries (both of origin and where one may call home). The semiotic language he uses taps into the most basic of human needs and without being too contrived he presents untitled works that represent a specifically universal moment of time. His is a prayer, wrought with silence and replete with a sense of satisfaction in uncertainty and while existential, optimistic for the future.

Jannis Kounellis, Installation view, Untitled work
The Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens
Photograph by Katy Hamer, 2012
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Ugo Rondinone, nude (xxxxxxxxxxxx), 2011
Installation view, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens
Photograph by Katy Hamer, 2012

Also on view at the Museum of Cycladic Art is nude by Ugo Rondinone. This exhibition is somewhat similar yet completely different from that of Kounellis’ on the opposite side of the building. Here Rondinone exhibits seven life-size nude figures, molded bodies that have been assembled and made of various materials. The figures sit in moments of contemplative reflection and are constructed of wax and earth pigments. For this exhibition, the artist changed the entire wing in order to present and establish a certain mood and environment for the work to exist in. Years after the Cycladic period (dating 3000 BC) the renovation and sense of “newness” in the space feels refreshing and a subtle smell of a recent paint job and newly installed wooden floors hangs in the air. It gives his figures, which the press release describes as “resting” a particular place in time. While not necessarily  hinting at any visual reference of “contemporary” they exist within a period that is easily identifiable as the 20th, if not 21st century, although all dated 2011 & 2012. Kounellis and Rondinone offer the viewer a particular moment of contemplation but in completely different ways. Kounellis paints a portrait of an individual but also by shear number of objects including, coats, shoes or hats, the work also lends itself towards social presence. In nude, Rondinone speaks directly with the individual. He strips the body of garments and beyond a skull cap (in this case assumed it was needed during the mold process) hovers in a frozen state of vulnerability. Even if the body language of each figure appears comfortable rather than uncomfortable, each gaze is downcast and as if assembled poorly at a mannequin factory, some of the joints where shoulder meets arm, for example, look loose as if they could fall off.

Both contemporary artists offer visual structures composed mostly of earth based hues and a focus on a literal and non-literal objective that make people who and what they are. With Rondinone’s nudes several “bodies” are in space while with Kounellis hundreds of pairs of glasses may fill a particular area, a relic left behind. Each approach is a reflection, offering a moment of respite for any who might be wandering the hot summer streets of Athens, and take a minute (or a few hours) to step inside.

Ugo Rondinone, divided heaven, 2012
Concrete, reinforcement, steel, 8 parts
Installation view, Cycladic Museum of Art, Athens
Photograph by Katy Hamer, 2012

Jannis Kounellis is on view until September 30th, 2012
Ugo Rondinone nudes is on view until September 19th, 2012
The Museum of Cycladic Art
4 Neofytou Douka Str/ 1Irodotou & Vasilissis Sofias Ave.
Athens, Greece

Opening hours are: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 10:00am – 5:00pm
Thursday 10:00am – 8:00pm and Sunday 11:00am – 5:00pm
Closed Tuesdays.

More soon!
xo