IYP X P.E.T. Projects, Athens
Prizing Eccentric Talents III
Curated by: George Bekirakis & Angelo Plessas
The conception of this exhibition is all about its name.
We let ourselves go spontaneously to see what this title would bring to mind, as a creation of prompts. We immediately imagined the concept of prize as a plot for how individuals and groups relate or connect.
What could be a prize nowadays? Prizing is a ritualistic act of giving a social value to an individual. It is a form of currency giving this individual new identification and recognition. Contemporary art is one of the most visible examples where creativity and its value are the foundations of motivation. The artworld is a permanent archive of different forms of honors, distinctions, exclusivity and scarcity.
Art shows offer an ambiguous view as both containers and tools of this perpetual and anachronistic regulation but also form (sometimes) a communal mind between artists and curators for a desire to say something new on culture. Being in a show is almost getting a prize – I heard an artist saying recently, a metaphor which sounds very valid. While curation methodology has permitted artists to achieve greater recognition and expansion, it fails to acknowledge the serious problems that such bulk of short-lived recognitions creates. This results in a sense of false overpowering, delusion, no sense of purpose or process, etc.
Do curators by default take over the myth by establishing these systems by over- selecting, over-judging, over- evaluating people or objects making their shows and their selections extremely predictable? Do we all look at the artistic community from a wider perspective? Do artists tend to reconcile with these contradictions? What kind of shape “prizing” takes in our hyper-connected society nowadays? Let’s take the recent craziness with AI and its platforms as an example.
What kind of exhibition and content will be “revealed” if one puts a random list of artists’ names on one of the AI text or image platforms. Imagine this can already be done with the simple tools we have! Will this exhibition look more like a radical and multidimensional proposal or will it just be a mechanical copy of the human mind? Despite the increasingly controversial shift of image and discourse, are new processes emerging of curating and experiencing exhibitions? Our world is increasingly relying on technology to solve immediate questions aesthetic, conceptual, and of course hierarchical.
Welcome to the world of Punk Capitalism and Algorithmic Curating!
The artists and their artworks in the show are not explicitly tackling any of the above arguments. Their selection is personal and impulsive. The contradicting title of the show Prizing Eccentric Talents makes its appearance in an intense and troubled time.
The show aspires to recuperate from dogmatic hierarchies and the groupings of curatorial homogenizations. The show examines how such diverse voices could interact as a newly formed community. Their works stand as free-floating non-sequential propositions challenging relations both corporeal and communal. They are containers of ideas seeking context and a united mood may arise.
The mood is the exhibition. The exhibition is the algorithm!
Featuring: Niki Analyti, Athanasios Argianas, Michalis Katzourakis, Marina Xenofontos, Janis Rafailidou, Dora Economou, Maria Papadimitriou, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Lynda Benglis, Lucas Samaras, Gabriella Simossi.
Lucas Samaras (1936-2024)
Reconstruction #105, 1979
sewn fabrics
174 x 195 cm
Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection
Lynda Benglis (b. 1941)
Female Sensibility, 1973
video, film, PAL
13:13 minutes
