Art goes ‘up against the wall’
The title of this exhibition is very much to the point. «Up Against the Wall,» on display at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, does not feature works in the usual beautiful frames that usually add to the presentation. Nor do the works lean against the white walls of the spacious gallery. The works are the walls themselves. This is not some group graffiti exhibition but a display that has put the art of seven foreign artists right on the walls – during Kathimerini’s visit, the organizer wondered out loud about the challenge of the unavoidable «peeling off» of Adam Cvijanovic’s landscape at the end of the exhibition, a work that at first glance looks like it has been painted in situ. The exhibition is an imaginative tapestry of art, which at certain moments gets carried away and spills onto the floor. Large-sized works cover the greatest part of the walls. Visitors get two different impressions, a more generalized one from afar and a more detailed one from up close. Both are revealing. In Marta dell’Angello’s work, we see a series of human bodies in different postures. The artist wants each visitor to find their own body in this rich and varied collection of movement, which stems from her own experience of posing as a nude model in art workshops. A bit further down, the Alterazioni Video collective has put on display a wall depiction of conversations the collective’s members had on the Internet regarding the materials they should use in a work of art and the direction they should follow. In front of the wall, visitors see the result of those conversations – actually everything Alterazioni Video chose not to do. All of a sudden, it looks like the sculpture on the floor is the negative of a babbling wall. Maya Attoun and Francesco Simeti’s pieces, which depict images that give the impression of being outdoors, welcome visitors in the ground-floor hall. Each work tells a different story. But the sense of aesthetics and the idea of gluing art right on to the wall could raise many questions regarding the position of works of art in a venue and their lack of permanence. The exhibition has been curated by Rita de Alencar Pinto. «Up Against the Wall» is on display at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (48 Armatolon & Klefton, Ambelokipi, tel 210.643.9466). The exhibition runs 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays as well as noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays, through November 14.
