Athens Biennale 2009: Heaven
15 June – 4 October, 2009
Various Venues
Athens, Greece

By Rea Cris

The second Athens Biennale was ambitious in both its scope and scale, but the content seems disjointed and random.  With exhibition titles such as ‘How Many Angels can Dance on the Head of a Pin?’ and ‘For the Straight Way is Lost’ the biennale seemed to be running on theoretical overload.  There was an over-abundance of video installations and audiences wandered from one exhibit to the next with no evident coherency or understanding.  On the other hand, the positive aspect of biennales is that they allow one to discover and intimately interact with artists from around the globe.

Anja Kirschner
Polly II – Plan for a Revolution in Docklands.

Kirschner’s video installation is located in a room with slanting ceilings and twisting corridors. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, confusing and uncomfortable, which suits the theme of the video installation. Plan for a Revolution in Docklands is a futuristic apoplectic depiction of London’s East End transformed by severe flooding. High-rise apartments are transformed into squat dwellings in an infinite ocean with make-shift boats milling around.  The work addresses the social upheavals that follow catastrophic events and is especially poignant with our current battle against climate change. One scene depicts a government consultation meeting with local residents; as tempers rise so does the water. People express little surprise at the continuing flood and simply shift to drier ground.  The work is an uneasy depiction of a society on the brink of anarchy and a sordid reminder to those that do ‘survive’ that the battle has just begun.

Savvas Christodoulides
The Blushing Virgin

This large sculpture is made from reclaimed items and presents itself more as a three-dimensional collage. A small bust of the Virgin Mary sits atop of an old chandelier, it’s empty spaces creating a barren plinth. A hand covers the Virgin’s face, obscuring her gaze and preventing our own.  The work is a delicate and nostalgic farewell to religious heroes, their mystic powers and influence waning in a modern society. 

Marie Wilson Valaoritis

The Athens Biennale displays a few of American Surrealist painter Wilson Valaoritis’ work.  These relatively small and intimate pieces seem to draw inspiration from Native American imagery with the majority of the works centring around an imaginary totem pole.  Known for her interest in automatism of symmetrical shapes the works can resemble a colourful intricate Rorschach ink blot universe.  Like her work, the artist herself remains a mystery as there is virtually next to nothing about her on the internet. She is continually linked with her Greek poet husband Nanos Valaoritis who also exhibited at the biennale.

Paul Chan
Oh Why so Serious?

Paul Chan is best known for his shadowy projections such as the famous ‘1st Light’ depicting cars, bicycles and humans floating upwards in a slow dreamy tornado storm while telephone poles stay motionless.  His reinterpretations of the world are curiously delightful and deceivingly morbid.  “Oh Why so Serious?” is a standard grey computer keyboard with all the keys replaced by proportionate miniature three dimensional tombstones. The effect resembles a tightly packed cemetery. The viewer’s initial reaction is one of delight at the bizarre metamorphosis of such a commonplace object.  This piece deals with state executions and the use of a keyboard is quite expressive. None of the tombstones carry any letters or numbers, emphasising the point that in death we are all the same. The use of office equipment demonstrates the absurd and disturbing relation between death and the bureaucracy and administration of a state execution. On a more personal note, the tombstone keyboard could be a reminder of our own individual deaths, where we increasingly spend more (wasted?) time at computers, typing our own passage of time with each click of the keys.

Dorothy Iannone
The Next Great Moment in History is Ours

Dorothy Iannone’s work could easily be misconstrued as overtly feminist, but despite the fact that she started painting in the 1960s at the start of feminist movements, her message is very different. Her body of work is autobiographical and revolves around personal spiritual freedom through union with a lover.  Much of her work is about her life with longtime lover Dieter Roth and she painted herself having sex before Jeff Koons’ notorious photographs with his porn-star wife and produced a book listing all the men she had slept with predating Tracey Emins’ tent by 28 years. Her style has been compared to everything from Egyptian frescos, Byzantine mosaics, and Japanese woodblocks to Indian erotic paintings and even though these influences can be pin-pointed, Iannone has also developed her own folkloric visual vocabulary, the most notable being women having both symbolized vagina and scrotum demonstrating the vulnerability in both sexes.   ‘The Next Great Movement in History is Ours’ is composed like a comic strip with various stories simultaneously interlocking. The piece, rather than being a political message, seems more like a gentle mocking. Iannone demonstrates that any moment is our own to take and that everyone and everything is connected in history.

http://www.anjakirschner.com
www.savvaschristodoulides.com
http://www.greenenaftaligallery.com/artist/Paul-Chan
http://www.airdeparis.com/artists.htm (click on IANNONE Dorothy)