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ART NEWS: NEON + The Whitechapel Gallery Present Work by Over Thirty Artists in Their First Major Collaboration

A_Thousand_Doors._NEON_and_the_Whitechapel_Gallery._Daniel_Silver._Dig__2013
Daniel Silver | Dig, 2013 | An Artangel commission Installation view | Photo: Marcus J. Leith

A Thousand Doors 4th May – 30th June 2014 The Gennadius Library, The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

NEON and the Whitechapel Gallery are to present ‘A Thousand Doors’, the first major collaboration in Athens between the two organizations. NEON work to widen access to contemporary art and are committed to contributing to the vital cultural activity in Athens.

‘A Thousand Doors’ is an introduction to site-specific art. Over thirty artists have been selected to participate in the show, with each work reflecting the ideological foundations of Greek civilization and mythology on which the Gennadius Library’s gardens and interiors were built. Housing over 120,000 books and archives, the exhibition will lead visitors from the library into the gardens.

Five Greek artists of different generations have been commissioned by NEON to create works inspired by the gardens and libraries. Kostas Ioannidis’s Dawn Chorus (2014) is a sound installation that uses recordings of birds collated by a public library in America. The chorus of birdsong will begin at 5.30pm every day, triggering the birds in the gardens to respond at the wrong time of day and heralding a new dawn. Valentina Karga will revive Aristotle’s Peripatetic School in an interactive piece where visitors are invited to take part in a walking university titled Exercises of Walking and Talking (2014). Karga will walk through the gardens with participants discussing education and looking towards the future. The conversations will then be transcribed by the artist from memory, typed-up as a record of the work.

Within the library, Isa Genzken’s I Love New York, Crazy City (1995-6) holds a mirror to society and the make-up of a particular city, while Pavel Büchler’s What the Cleaner’s Found (1996) offers an insight into the life of the artist. These will be displayed alongside works by Mark Manders and Michael Dean that have been created using the book as a formal element in their sculptures. Georg Herald’s Bent Poetry (1987) is a poem transcribed on to wood and suspended amongst the books in the permanent collection to create an interaction between the literary works displayed and housed in the interiors.

Outside in the gardens visitors will encounter Conversation Piece II (2001) by Juan Muñoz, who described himself as a storyteller. Muñoz encouraged interaction with the figures that form his work, enticing viewers into the scene and yet isolating them from the action – concealing the perceived conversations and whispers. Adrián Villar Rojas also seeks to tell his audience a story – Return of the World is a series produced in 2012 which creates a world of ruins that question history and how relics of the past shape ideas relating to the future. The fragility of the clay used by Villar Rojas in the sculptures points to how fleeting history can be.

Daniel Silver’s Dig (2013) appears to be the remnants of an archaeological survey, with broken, seemingly unearthed figures accompanying the marble busts placed nearby. Are the sculptures of men now long forgotten or renderings of gods once worshiped?

These works were all commissioned for a particular location but visitors to the exhibition are invited to view the sculptures anew and reflect upon what it means to see them situated in a new context amidst the history of Hellenic culture.

neon.org.gr

About
NEON is a non-profit organization based in Athens that works to widen access to contemporary art and culture.
Taking its name from the Greek word for ‘new’, NEON is committed to broadening the appreciation, understanding, and creation of contemporary art in Greece and abroad in the firm belief that it is a tool for growth and development. Founded by art collector and entrepreneur Dimitris Daskalopoulos, and under the Directorship of Elina Kountouri, NEON breaks with the convention that a contemporary art organization should occupy a single space. Instead, NEON employs the open and diverse areas within society to carry out its program. NEON engages with a large, public audience and acts on a variety of projects to expose contemporary art’s ability to stimulate and inspire society at large.

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