Art
51% Angel / 49% Devil
Edward Ruscha
Printer: Ed Hamilton
Publisher: Edward Ruscha
Date: 1984
Location: Not on display
Century: 20th Century AD
Media: Color Lithograph On Rives BFK Paper; Torn And Deckle Edges
Dimensions: Sheet: 574 x 767 mm (22 5/8 x 30 3/16 in.); Image: 449 x 657 mm (17 11/16 x 25 7/8 in.)
Exhibition History: Acquisition of an Archive: The Graphic Works of Ed Ruscha CPLH 5/12/01 – 10/7/01
edition 25
24/25
6th Athens Biennale
ANTI
October 26–December 9, 2018
The 6th Athens Biennale: ANTI announces the artist list for its 2018 edition.
Curated by Stefanie Hessler / Kostis Stafylakis / Poka-Yio
Participating artists:
Spyros Aggelopoulos*, Monira Al Qadiri, Loukia Alavanou, Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic, Ivana Bašić, Tianzhuo Chen, Chim Pom, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti*, Brody Condon*, Celia Daskopoulou, Ted Davis, Danielle Dean, JP Downer, Nina Runa Essendrop*, Georgia Fambris, Cao Fei, Ed Fornieles*, Angelos Frentzos, Sarah Friend, Front Deutscher Äpfel, Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Eva Giannakopoulou, Gigas, Joey Holder, Carsten Höller, Callum Leo Hughes*, Actually Huizenga (of Patriarchy), Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman & Daniel Keller, Binelde Hyrcan, Maryam Jafri, Sascha Jahn & TheBoundCollective, Jakub Jansa, Geumhyung Jeong, Kahlil Joseph, Florence Jung, Raja’a Khalid*, Joy Kolaitis, Peter V. Kritikos, Laboratory for Microclimates*, Euripides Laskaridis / Osmosis*, Delaine Le Bas*, Candice Lin, Fei Liu, Rachel Maclean, Basim Magdy, Miltos Manetas, Marianne Maric, Eva and Franco Mattes, Metahaven, Quenton Miller, Molleindustria, Shana Moulton, Sirous Namazi*, Narcissister, New Models, Pinar Öğrenci, Marisa Olson, Uģis Olte & Morten Traavik, Omsk Social Club*, Ilias Papailiakis, Eva Papamargariti*, Yuri Pattison*, Heather Phillipson, Signe Pierce*, AnnaMaria Pinaka*, Wong Ping, Michail Pirgelis, Agnieszka Polska, Lykourgos Porfyris*, Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Johannes Paul Raether*, Jon Rafman*, Kosta Rapadopoulos / Jasin Challah, Tabita Rezaire, Roee Rosen, Iepe Rubingh, Saeborg, Tai Shani*, Heji Shin, Aliza Shvarts*, Helle Siljeholm*, Marianna Simnett, Linnéa Sjöberg, Panos Sklavenitis*, Marilia Stagkouraki, Jenna Sutela, The Agency, The Domestic Godless*, The Peng! Collective*, Ryan Trecartin, Theo Triantafyllidis, Anna Uddenberg*, Nicole Wermers, Tori Wrånes, Lauren Wy, Lu Yang, Young Boy Dancing Group, Costas Zapas, Zhala*
*An asterisk denotes a new production
The artists participating in ANTI inhabit the center of Athens offering a distinct, idiosyncratic and uneasy screenshot of our political, social and cultural momentum.
ANTI’s main venue is TTT, an iconic Athenian building that, since the 1930s, has served as the central offices of the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization. The building, with its Kafkaesque, administrative architecture and interior design, is a symbol of the transition from analog to digital communication—a symbol of the shift from the era of wire consoles to the early computer age to the current era of online pleasures and discomforts.
The exhibition dissects the way we polarize, fight and antagonize in post-digital times: in the age of social media, of neo-reactionary movements, of post-truth nihilism and of conspiracy theories developed by the alt-right. ANTI is about inventing the most effective strategies to oppose the hate of the alt-right and other neo-reactionary fronts. Can we discover strategies that go beyond the algorithmic, visual and political regimes weaponized by regressive and fascist agendas?
Today, an oppositional stance, an attitude of ANTI, seems to encompass wide arenas of life, including cultural expressions, identity politics, art labor and media including weird advertising, video games and music video productions. In other words, attitudes of non-conformity, dissent and alternativeness are rapidly becoming canonized and commodified. How can we tackle the dynamic dialectics between ANTI’s eruption and ANTI’s commodification?
The artists in ANTI interrogate the post-digital era, scenarios of transhuman enhancement, cults of wellness as well as bodily and spiritual transformation. They do so by devising structures of everyday life: from the gym to the shopping mall, from the online forum to the sex dungeon, from the office to the political front. The artistic devices composing the 6th Athens Biennale reveal the dangers of today’s neo-reactionary revolt, asking what might motivate reactionary emotions and fantasies and how to change the current structures of pleasure. As such, the 6th Athens Biennale invites viewers to explore various instead-ofs, both speculative and earnest, open to contamination, dirty and alive.
Read the full curatorial statement here.
Professional preview: October 25, 1–7pm
Opening days: October 26–28, including a diverse program of side events
Athens Biennale
Main venue
TTT, 15, Stadiou Str.
10561 Athens
Greece
The 6th Athens Biennale ANTI is realized in partnership with Onassis Culture.
Jeff Koons (b. 1955)
Triple Elvis
signed and dated ‘Jeff Koons ’09’ (on the overlap)
oil on canvas
102 x 138 in. (259.1 x 350.5 cm.)
Painted in 2009.
© Jeff Koons
In Phanta Firma, Long & Stent have quoted and appropriated signs, tropes, and motifs of woman from contemporary culture and the canon of art history as an erotic lure that guides the viewer into unfamiliar territory. In these works the artists have carefully composed their own bodies, and those of friends, according to the traditions of Classical aesthetics. Embodying Botticelliean nymphs and Venuses, Classical sculptures, and sirens draped in material that clings to the female form or billows in a seductive Monroesque fashion, their gaze never confronts the viewer.
However, rather than passive, still and compliant, these young figures are in control, self-assured, and enjoying their own agency as they completely immerse themselves in their hyper real earthly landscapes. For Long & Stent, ‘in dissolving the body within these spaces there is a sense of energy being liberated through the clash and mingling of matter’. This incorporation of the landscape with the female form forces the male gaze to blink and poses questions to the viewer regarding the cultural construction and representation of female sexuality and desire.
Long & Stent’s sculptures, made from blown glass slumped and deflated onto rocks collected while on location shooting their images, and containing water samples from these sites, continue this project. They act as physical conduits to these photographic works, furthering the connection between the viewer, the landscape and the figure’s experience.
Phanta Firma is a playful fantasy that seeks to embed itself in solid ground.
Jordan Wolfson
Untitled (for Parkett, no. 100/101)
2017
Medium: Screenprint
Dimensions: composition (irreg.) and sheet: 27 5/16 × 19 7/16″ (69.4 × 49.4 cm)
Publisher: Parkett Publishers, Zurich and New York
Printer: Atelier für Siebdruck Lorenz Boegli, Müntscheimer, Switzerland
Edition: 35
Jordan Wolfson
New York-based artist Jordan Wolfson is a rising star in the global art world who has stated, “I like the viewers to do the interpretive legwork;” indeed his videos, sculptures, and performances present baffling, enigmatic narratives, often conveyed by imaginative animated characters. Though Wolfson studied sculpture at RISD, he has gained significant recognition—inclusion in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, for instance—largely because of his video art, peculiar mash-ups of elements pulled from the depths of the internet as well as industry materials culled from the worlds of advertising, music, and technology. Frequently revolving around a single speaking protagonist, these videos, or sometimes they take the form of animatronic sculptures, reference sexuality, art history, consumer culture, and male-female relationships. Ultimately, Wolfson’s work is underlined by clear artistic intentions—for him, the intersection of art and technology is a specific space, one in which the project of modernism continues to unfold. He explains, “I’m not interested in cartoons. I’m not interested in computer animation. I’m interested in the experience of seeing something.”
Wolfson is the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Cartier Award, granted by the Frieze Foundation. In addition to his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, Wolfson’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Chisenhale Gallery in London, and the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art in New York, among others.
Thomas Ruff
tos07, 2001
Giclée print
23.62 x 29.53 in (59.99 x 75.01 cm)
Edition of 50
Signed and numbered in pencil on verso
In his series “Nudes,” Thomas Ruff digitally manipulated pornographic images he found online, clouding the crude clarity of the originals and creating blurry, mysterious and thought-provoking imagery.
Thomas Ruff
Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) lives and works in Dusseldorf. He studied photography from 1977 to 1985 at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, where fellow students included Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer and Thomas Struth. Ruff is well known for large-scale portraits in profile or straight-on, as well as his provocative nudes. His work has been shown in museum exhibitions, biennial exhibitions and major gallery exhibitions around the world.