Peripatos

Ort.

 

The Aristotelian peripatetic school linked the act of moving physically across a space with the development of a philosophical method.

Paying homage to her origins, Olympia Polymeni has actualized the concept, inviting the viewers to a walk into her artistic practice.

In the labyrinthine corridors of the “Old Print Works” building, location of the Ort Café, the visitor is immediately cast as the show's first actor, having to operate a decisive choice about movement and direction.

In the first room, red lines of color bleed through the whole length of the paper as open wounds.

The paintings were realized letting the acrylic running on a small tablet, in an apparently free process whose movement was however under the artist's control since the beginning. The rich, saturated color of the works offers a dramatic contrast with its clean lines, and hints to a royal welcoming attribute, idea that will be re-proposed in a corridor upstairs.

There, a sculpture, which was transported on the site in a small box - almost a funerary urn for fragments of imagination –, has been posed on the red pavement.

Stripped of its original hubris, this setting aims to overcome the explicit dichotomy between the red-carpet glamour and the mundane decadence of the box, and to inspire instead a breath of curiosity toward life’s possibilities.

The choice of Plasticine as the artwork’s material is not casual; Polymeni wanted to render the plasticity of classical sculptures and of anthropomorphic bones through a medium that was cheap and disposable, as human flesh seems to be considered in this contemporary society.

Plasticine was chosen also for being prone to endure, and show, the distress of travelling to Birmingham from London, where the artist’s studio is located.

Leaving a mark on the sculpture through movement was meant as a way to transform it from factual object to artwork, in the same way as in the peripatetic school thoughts were shaped into philosophy.

Walking through the building while looking for the artworks, the viewers become allies and conspirers to an almost voyeuristic act of discovery.

The flesh of these bones and blood are the viewers themselves, and pushing them out of a comfort zone, as in a transient memento mori, is a reminder that everything -art, people- has to die, but for now it is very much alive.

Curating and text by Silvia Caso 

10 white kilos, plasticine, 2012

F******* Puzzles

Feminism (“a bad word”) Puzzles is a project that follows how the idea and the depiction of the female body have been developed through time by artists or by feminist art in particular, and how the body is associated to politics.

The aim of the project is to revisit the work of key women artists juxtaposed to the work of more marginalised or even male approaches in order to challenge the perception of the viewer nowadays. Feminism Puzzles invite the viewer to find similarities or differences of meaning and visual codes between the two images.

F******* Puzzle 1

Photo 1: Vlassis Caniaris, Untitled, plaster and carnations, 1969

Photo 2: Hannah Wilke, Untitled, latex rubber, c. 1980

Break the silence: The exhibition of Vlassis Caniaris

The exhibition that signaled the exit from the artists' silence came in May of 1969 by Vlassis Caniaris (1928-2011). This historical and much - discussed exhibition took place in New Gallery, Athens and had an intense political and in a way activistic character, as it aimed not only to protest against the Regime but mainly to activate the Greek people. The works displayed included human members and objects in plaster, barbed wire, red carnations, all of them -especially plaster and carnations- with a deep symbolic meaning. The plaster, which morphologically belonged to Caniaris' work (he had already used plaster from 1963-64), was a direct reference to Papadopoulos' famous phrase "Greece is sick. We had put her in plaster. She shall remain in plaster until she recovers."

There was no exhibition catalogue as Caniaris himself had sensored the texts that were going to be published in order to avoid the exhibition from being "targeted" by the Junta. The artist says "My aim was to keep the exhibition from being targeted because then others would have lost their courage, those who were working in the context of the resistance". Instead of catalogue each visitor was offered a red carnation growing in a small plaster cube, also symbolic of the idea that the carnation is growing despite the plaster.

A few days before the exhibition Caniaris had sent abroad three packages containing the small plaster cubes with the carnation, photographs of the works and a biography so that they could be used in case of the exhibition being "targeted" by the dictatorship as he was afraid. The exhibition was a great success -Caniaris had to make another 1000 plaster cubes with carnations for the people visiting the exhibition during the 21 days that it lasted- fulfilling its aim. Even the international press published the story. After the exhibition the artist had to leave the country for Paris because he was in danger of being arrested by the Regime. Eleni Ganiti 

American Feminist Artist Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke (1940-1993), is considered the first feminist artist to use vaginal imagery in her work. In the early 1960's she first made her signature vaginal ceramic sculptures, and in the mid 1970's she began to experiment with latex, creating individual pieces and installations of multiple "blossoms". 

"I become my art, my art becomes me... My heart is hard to handle, my art is too. Feel the folds; one fold, two fold, expressive, precise gestural symbols... latex rubber, the loose arrangements of love vulnerably exposed..." (Excerpts of Hannah Wilke Letter in Art: A Woman's Sensibility, Feminist Art Program, California Institute of the Arts, 1975.)

Visual Prejudice has caused world wars, mutilation, hostility, and alienation generated by fear of "the other."... The pride, power, and pleasure of one's own sexual being threaten cultural achievement, unless it can be made into a commodity that has economic and social utility. ... To diffuse self-prejudice, women must take control of and have pride in the sensuality of their own bodies and create a sensuality in their own terms, without referring to the concepts degenerated by culture. ... to touch, to smile, to feel, to flirt, to state, to insist on the feelings of the flesh, its inspiration, its advice, its warning, its mystery, its necessity for the survival and regeneration of the universe. (Excerpts from complete text originally published in American Women Artists, exhibition catalogue, Museo d' Arte Contemporani, Sao Paulo, 1980. Published in Hannak Wilke: A Retrospective, University of Missouri Press, 1989.) http://www.hannahwilke.com/index.html

F******* Puzzle 2

Photo 1: Elli Souyoultzoglou-Seraidari or Nelly, Mona Palva at the Parthenon from the series Acropolis Nudes, 1927
Photo 2: Georgia Sagri, still image from Athens Polytechnic performance, 1995
 

 

The Acropolis in Female Perspective

In 1927, photos stirred up a storm of controversy on the part of historians and archaeologists in Athens. The Greek photographer Elli Souyoultzoglou-Seraidari or Nelly (1899-1998) photographed the dancer Mona Palva in the nude on the Acropolis. Although the Acropolis had been the subject of (civil) war, plunder, neglect and other blasphemy for many centuries, this was one bridge too far. The Acropolis had been a fortified site from around 1250 B.C. The dominant temple was the Parthenon, dedicated to the Goddess Athena, honoured by an enormous statue. A woman on the Acropolis was thus not unusual, but Athena as statue was well dressed.  It was the first time the Acropolis, the Greek symbol of independence and a glorious past, was shown in the company of a naked woman, even a dancer. The European Spectator, Benaki Museum

Artist in trouble over unclothed box stunt

An award-winning artist who made a splash four years ago by posing without clothes in a glass box outside the Athens Polytechnic, on the anniversary of the 1973 student revolt, will stand trial today for “scandalous behaviour.”

”Wearing a bikini outfit of white bandages, Georgia Sagri stood for over three hours in the open-roofed box among crowds taking part in the annual Polytechnic celebration, in an act she described as “performance art.”

But a prosecutor, acting on police complaints, charged the art student with “creating scandal through lewd acts.”

Sagri, 24 — who won the 1999 DESTE Prize for a video installation showing her spending five days in a Kolonaki shop window — said she had not meant to offend. “Lots of truly obscene things happen around us, with official permission,” she told yesterday’s Eleftherotypia daily. “I would call it a normal act,” her lawyer added. Ekathimerini Press

 



F******* Puzzle 3

 

Photo 1: Anna Maria Maiolino, still image from the performance Entervidas (Between Lives), 1981/2011
Photo 2: Sylvie Fleury, still image from the video Here Comes Santa, 2003

Entervidas (Between Lives) was made in 1981, as the military dictatorship in Brazil was collapsing. At a time when a return to democracy had become of glimmer of hope, Maiolino wrote: ‘I use the simplicity of the egg, the archetype par excellence of life, to talk about life. How it resists, despite everything’. This was a time of regime change when the Brazilian people were literary ‘stepping on eggshells’. Part of the performance involved placing eggs outside in the street and walking between them. There is already a precarious tension between the scattered arrangement and the vulnerability of the eggs. (Briony Fer, Precarious Fields, Camden Arts Centre)

Here Comes Santa (2003) is a video. The camera focuses on a pair of lean, female legs in delicate high heels walking across a red carpet covered with silver glitter balls. The balls shatter loudly under the stiletto heels. Gracefully but decisively the destruction continues with each step: the fragile, red-and-silver Christmas idyll is broken into a hundred thousand pieces. (Cooling Out-On the Paradox of Feminism, jrp ringier)

Tasseography 2011

SARTORIAL CONTEMPORARY ART

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OLYMPIA POLYMENI - TASSEOGRAPHY: extended until 13 May 2011 April 6th - May 13th Much to our delight, Olympia Polymeni's new installation is incessantly changing in shape and texture to the point of gaining another dimension of meaning. Olympia has always expressed fascination with art objects that reflect on their own subject matter, and now after one week at Sartorial, her works allude to the art of ‘reading the coffee' more than ever before. Gloss paint is known for its penchant for mutation and changes of shape and texture well after the painting is formally – that is, by traditional standards – completed. Polymeni's choice of medium can only be considered perfect, now that it resonates with the metaphor of tasseography and identities shaped by chance and perception. On this occasion the exhibition shall be extended until the 13th of May. Polymeni’s work takes an unusual twist on the over-used motif of the female identity, explored through the metaphor of tasseography, or the art of fortune-telling by patterns of ground coffee on the surface of a white cup, that is still widely practiced in her native Greece. Polymeni has created a series of paintings and sculptures evocative of curvy female outlines as though formed by leftover coffee. The traditional reading of the female body would have it reduced to the womb, a black hole leading to decay and death, irrational like fortune telling or like Polymeni’s uncannily disjointed bodies.  Lumpy blacknesses acquire a presence of their own, as the texture of paint and sculptures of wax trigger off an intensely organic response, making the fragments of female bodies seem accidental and insignificant, as though they could have taken any other shape. Polymeni interrogates and subverts the traditional notion of femininity reduced to confinement and “womanly” pastimes like “telling the coffee” in the afternoon just to while away the time. Not without irony, identity is represented as tragically dissipated with no hope to ever be whole again, constructed and refashioned over and over again by social norms and preconceptions. The female body eventually becomes a scene for political, social and existential statements. Olympia Polymeni was born in Preveza, Greece in 1975. After graduating in philosophy, she studied painting at Athens School of Fine Arts and moved to London in 2009 to pursue her studies, earning an MA in Fine Art from Central St. Martins College in 2010. She lives and works in East London.

26 Argyle Square London WC1H 8AP - art@sartorialart.com - + 44 (0) 20 7278 0866 2010 Sartorial Contemporary Art

See-through, gloss paint on wood, 150 x 100 cm, 2011

Swallow, gloss paint on wood, 150 x 100 cm, 2011

Torso in Ermine, gloss paint on wood, 150 x 100 cm, 2011

Mole, gloss paint on wood, 100 x 150 cm, 2011

Pythia, h 67 x w 44 x d 49 cm, black wax, 2011

The Importance of the Others

FEMINIST AND GAY ISSUES - THE IMPORTANCE OF THE OTHERS 

Nicola Ruben Montini invited the Greek artist Olympia Polymeni to show her works in his home/studio Space4828 of Venice. The two artists first met at Central Saint Martin's College in London, where they focused their interest on gender studies, a research area not covered by the academic system in their native Countries, Italy and Greece.

Feminist and gay issues, The Importance of the others is an open studio perceived as dialogue between the works of two artists who defines themselves as gay activist and a feminist artist.

The statement of the exhibition is the margin between the two works in which both artists have resorted to use cinematic references to explicit their research: the videos Sorry (by NRM) and Beware of the Cross (by O.P.).

Part of the performative research of NRM incorporates the language of feminist performance addressing to issues related to homosexuality, in an attempt of re-enacting the subversive intent and searching for the crudity of the radical feminist direct language, with paradoxical results. In her paintings and sculptures Olympia Polymeni does not appear assertive in telling the women’s condition but rather seems to find the screen of formality and tone of blunt aesthetic "more diplomatic" and allusive. In both cases, it problematizes the machismo as a discourse on violence. Subverting a balance of power becomes an exercise in elegance and sometimes shamelessness.

Chiara Trivelli

All works by Olympia Polymeni are Courtesy of Sartorial Contemporary Art Gallery (London).

SPACE 4828

Spazio totale a un mese dalla Biennale. A Venezia inaugura la casa/studio/galleria d’artista Space4828 tra omosessualità e femminismo

Scritto da Redazione | mercoledì, 4 maggio 2011 · 3 commenti 

Olympia Polymeni, Beware of the cross 2011 (still da video)

Il mondo fra quattro mura. Questa l’impressione che si ricava, leggendo la presentazione di Space4828, nuovo eclettico spazio che si inaugura a Venezia poche settimane prima dell’inizio della Biennale. “È la casa/studio del giovane artista italiano Nicola Ruben Montini a Venezia, dove lui come artista, curatore e residente cura mostre, talks e proiezioni di e sull’arte contemporanea”.
Come dire: tutto quel che serve, a portata di mano. Che ora Montini intende condividere, creando “un luogo per la discussione e per la ricerca sull’arte contemporanea, con particolare interesse per trends emergenti da tutto il mondo”. Auguri! Intanto ha a esporre l’artista greca Olympia Polymeni: i due si sono conosciuti nientepopodimenoché al Central Saint Martin’s College di Londra, dove hanno potuto approfondire l’interesse per i gender studies, settore di ricerca non contemplato dal sistema accademico dei loro Paesi d’origine, l’Italia e la Grecia. In programma un open studio sul tema Feminist and gay issues, The importance of the others, pensato come dialogo tra le opere di un artista che si autodefinisce attivista gay e quelle di un’artista femminista.

Inaugurazione: giovedì 5 maggio 2011 – ore 18.30
Cannaregio 4828 – Venezia
http://www.space4828.com/

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