ART PRESENTATION: Jannis Kounellis

Some works of Jannis Kounellis have made history, such as his transformation in 1969 of the Roman gallery L’Attico into horse stables in “12 live horses”, but also in “Nabucco” in 1970, or in the Stommeln Pullheim Synagogue exhibition where fish evolved into a plate threatened with a knife in 1991.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Monnaie de Paris Archive

For his exhibition at Monnaie De Paris, Jannis Kounellis has composed a dramatic sculpture. As he answered to the invitation of Chiara Parisi, Director of Cultural Programs at Monnaie de Paris, who wanted to start 2016 with one of the “sacred monsters” of Contemporary art, “I come with empty hands as an old painter”. As a painter Jannis Kounellis designed the exhibition as a fresco, the artist begins with the heart of the last craftsman factory in Paris and the importance of energy in order to compose a real, dramatic sculpture using the whole thousand square meters of the 18th century salons by the Seine. Eminently present, concrete, irreducible, Kounellis’ new exhibition strikes the visitors with a direct experience, without any intermediary. The artist involves the visitor and raises the question of the process of an artwork’s fabrication. It is in the doing, in the work of the workshops, in the intuition of forms, in the modeling, that the project of the artist emerges. The work, “Libertà o Morte. W Marat W Robespierre”, 1969 is presented in the exhibition as well as the work “Da inventare sul posto” which will echo the beating heart of the coin presses of Monnaie de Paris, embodying the strength, the rhythm, the orchestration. The materials that Kounellis uses in his displays are political and historical messages as much as they are also about time and memory.

Info: Curator: Chiara Parisi, Monnaie De Paris, 11 Quai de Conti, Paris, Duration: 11/3-30/4/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00, Thu 11:00-22:00 11:00-22:00, www.monnaiedeparis.fr