The Museum of Cycladic Art exhibits a new site-specific work by Jannis Kounellis, on view until 30 September 2012.
Jannis Kounellis exhibits a new site-specific work at the Museum of Cycladic Art, at the Stathatos Mansion, the neoclassical wing of the Museum. Jannis Kounellis, whose contribution to the international art movement of Arte Povera has been defining, left Greece very young to leave behind the trauma of the civil war. He now returns to create a work amidst the economic and social crisis that Greece is currently going through. For his exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Kounellis uses materials found in the local Athenian markets and junkyards. These objects carry the history of the place, of a city that has been through endless changes of populations, ideologies, and levels of prosperity and in the last few years some very extreme changes. Kounellis uses newspapers, coal, burlap sacks, old shoes and glasses, overcoats, soil, and iron bars for his pieces, which are spread in the spaces of the neoclassical building. The works might reflect current problems but as always in Kounellis’s works, even though the objects have their own history, they are incorporated in his installations in such a way that in the end they become universal, ancient and modern.
Born in Piraeus, Greece in 1936, he lives and works in Rome. Kounellis has had major retrospectives and his work has been shown in important museums all over the world: The Stedelijk, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; the Obra Social, Caja de Pensiones, Madrid; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; MoCA, Chicago; Museo Nacional, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples; and Neue National Galerie, Berlin. Recent important solo exhibitions include Ambika P3, London, 2010, and Today Art Museum, Beijing in China, 2011. Kounellis holds an Artist Room at the Tate Modern.
Museum of Cycladic Art
4 Neofytou Douka st
10674 Athens, Greece
Hours: Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat, 10–17
Thu, 10–20; Sun, 11–17
www.cycladic.gr