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Marina Olympios has contacted many artists (painters, sculptors,
writers, musicians …) from numerous different countries asking
them one question: “Are you afraid of the death of art?”
The contents of the circumspect responses reveal their creative
process, founded on a new “artistic-geography”. From the fear
of the death of art to the fear of art, the thought process has
turned itself around to ask about the future of art. This
position proceeds via the desalination of art works closed up in
trend networks and vehicles of establishment.
The other condition, just as maintained, is the encountered
between the artist of the public, in which the discourse on
artwork privileges training the viewer how to perceive a work.
“Liberate the works of art” is their reply, their demonstration
put into action in a series of exhibitions that beacon each
stage of works created around themes which evoke contradictions
and tensions in our society.
Planted in the earth of a wide open Europe, and from its fact,
concerned with preserving her identity the cups and the trophies
of Marina Olympios demarcate a territory of art, a geography or
works. Nothing can enter calmly, if it is not ready to share
this unprecedented vision of images, of object, of actions,
unveiling the slip sliding of the senses which come about under
the effect of tangled juxtapositions and body scenography.
The relinquishment and asceticism of a gaze guides the visitor
over the threshold, arranging a moment to stop in order to break
down the conformism acquired in the act of appropriating and
consuming possessions. This sterilizes their subversive part,
which is buried by society. This reversal has been pushed to an
extreme by this artist in the exhibition “Philosophers to Eat”,
in which the destruction - consummation of a work, like the
death of art, liberates the artist and the public with a game of
simulation - miming, of opening out, in front of a hidden
camera.
Marina Olympios leads this
exploratory work through routes which
plonge
into her own past, her culture, her imaginary, peopled with
domestic Roman elephants, stuffed reptiles all intertwined in
symbols of a disarticulated society.
Violence, money, power, collective dramas surge from the cloth
they weave in the house of Europa, on which unfolds a mythic
scene, little playlets attached to a familiar backround of
archetypes: Life and Death, Nature and Society, Love and
Solitude. By their actions they appoint themselves as the
messengers of “TO SPEAK” about art against the death of
civilisation, against the death of looking at an artwork and the
dictatorship of images which banalize perception.
The artistic process rejoins fully the two principle
preoccupations of Art Centres: a place of experimentation and
promotion made available to contemporary artists, and an actor
of the regional cultural politics with the goal enraging the Art
public and serving as a mediator, as a signal, as a witness.
There are difficult questions to solve due to the diversity of
expectation.
How, in fact, to reach a majority non-public, to give them
access to contemporary creation in a more and more
“artificialized” environment impoverished and distracted by the
lee-ways of the “spectacular”? How to leave room for artistic
liberty in a society obsessed by all forms of “audimat” and
temptations on the commercialization of art, as if it is the
only credible and respectable end, the only recognition and
consecration of the artist. One needs a lot of courage,
abnegation, energy, obstination to appoint oneself artist today.
This is the resolute choice of Marina Olympios. Shock us again
and always, we could ask her, in the pleasure of the discovery,
surprise and interrogations that artworks give rise to.
Roger Balboni
Professor - Art Historian
Président de “Passages” Centre d’Art Contemporain |
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