Texts and Manifestos


The spirit of the era: Autobiographical Systems

Art Athina 2015, Platforms P6
Curator, Text : Emmanuel Mavrommatis

Analysis

This exhibition is conceived as a system that unfolds its successive logic consequences. The basic ideas of this exhibition are two: the first is about the notion that the artistic work is conceived by the artist-the creator her/ himself, as regards the logic that is installed and   the systems of Art that his/her logic uses as reference in a given installation. The other idea is that the artistic work is perceived by the researcher-theoretician, who is the spectator as regards the references which he/she attaches to it and that are related either to artistic or theoretical or methodological, philosophical, sociological systems, or with any synthesis among them,-the one that he himself attaches to the work through a logical system too. 

Actually two kinds of logic are perceived which are either the same or different or clash with each other. These are the basic theses of the exhibition with the varieties of colour in between. The main axis is the idea that what is given by the artist (the work as axiom) is susceptible to perception either as regards its inner evaluation by the artist-regarding his own propositions-either as regards any kind of evaluations concerning its own propositions, or as an analysis of their relationships and the possible syntheses of these proposition,-internal and external.

Consequently the exhibition is proposed as an exercise and as a problem. It is not an affirmative exhibition. The exhibition itself is a question. It actually depicts, by the way in which it exhibits its conclusions, a constituent function: to which point the artist is in a position to see, from its own unique perspective (as long as the artist is exhibiting and not his theoretician), the internal and external point of view, his own and that of the others at the same time, that of the one being judged and that of the judge, the one of the artist and that of the theoretician? The synthesis would be the work, if the artist hast the possibility to cultivate a third point of view assuming to display practically, materially or theoretically the connection of the Self and the Other and its corrections or possible revisions. The corrections/revisions are also the work. The connection would be the synthesis, a soulless work, a per se, independent of the evaluating judgement. The exhibition fights evaluation. Everything is equal to each other, as regards any given statement of their logic. The problem is the statement itself: how can one succeed in formulating the proposition through phases consistent to each other, justifying its necessity as really inevitable.





The Manifest of the Garden

2014
Athens by Art 

Curator, Text: Emmanuel Mavrommatis

Extract
[...] As the applications of the cooperative central authorities tend to function more and more and almost without return in the contemporary historic field of art -and at the same time consist the ways according to which some concepts are imposed by the people or the laws which have the power (mainly financial but also multinational connections) to promote them- we finally chose instead of that art which can be distinguished according to its origin (that is according to its introduction into an already recognized, by the authorities, system of art stereotypes or models), the analysis of the necessity of these models. To the position of the globalization of these models -as if they were equal to everybody whatever their origin was -we chose to search their real response to the lands where they apply. [...]



[...] The garden represents the land, that is the every single consequence of its special geography and its conditions as long as its geography is its economy, social life and culture -but also its memory and history. When the lands get alienated and seem to be the same under all circumstances, just because the authorities pretend they never make distinctions, then the memory and the history get lost, and this signifies the way to the demolition, the utilization and the abuse. In contrast to the alternative land of a system which pretends it does not come from a certain financial, political, ideological and consequently geographic and cultural ambiance, -so as to rescue its permanence, power and endurance, that is the possibility to perpetuate its model- we chose a land, which can work with no model, but according to its needs.We also chose the possibility to reject the model if we do not approve with it. This choice has a basic meaning which disputes the history of art as it constructed in a linear way by the centres of art authorities as a stereotype of immitation and spreading, and we claim the theoretical and critical analysis of its function in their own land as the minimum condition to know how to think, what they need, what they suggest. This position as an action of theory and criticism -but also as an action of exclusion of a de facto claim of a model recognition, -is also the possibility of a moment of freedom, -in a world that is getting alienated [...]