PHOTO:Manolis Baboussis -How To Repair A Tear

How someone will repair a tear or a crack, while at the same time he manifests his anxiety for the collapsing reality, creation and death. For the last 45 years, my photographic work has been defending the objective and sharp tableau image with a critical approach and sensitivity, involving notions of institutions and power, of environment and loss, against the false and staged image of diverse myths in our times, where art itself is increasingly becoming a derivative of fake news. In this exhibition, I present a unified multi-disciplinary installation articulated with various works, a creative selfie in which the viewer is invited to solve a crossword puzzle. I place a 3.90 m high totem of photographic tripods and two military stretchers into an unstable choreography, commenting on sharpness range of the photography process. A 10-metre long wall installation of my works embodies drawings, photographs, prints of my sculptures, architectural drawings and text. They are a group of images which, while functioning autonomously, they are in parallel dialogue with my speech presented in two video projections. I expresse my skepticism about approaches that favour the story telling rather than the artist’s anxiety over verifying the form of his work. I wonder whether creation occurs with or without concept today / if the exhibition needs a pretext / a hug at the end of the day? The first Video-projection entitled “I want” , manages meanings related to the dialectic between the artist and his work, which is controlled by the art market and the institutions, the distrust for the approaches that favor the story telling more and less the artist’s anxiety about the form of his work. The second video-projection with the title “I photographed”, projects a text of mine, with legible white letters on a white background, which refers to images around the creation, work and death of an artist without showing a single photographic image.-Manolis Baboussis

CV: Manolis Baboussis is a visual artist, photographer and architect. He studied architecture and restoration in Florence and Rome. He uses the medium of photography as well as drawings, texts, video projections and installations. His work focuses mainly on issues around institutions, memory and the environment. His first work, Volterra, was presented in 1973 as a slide show and an installation, while later the exhibition of his large-scale photographic images, regardless of chronological or thematic coherence, compose a dense conceptual and plastic dialogue. In 2013, he resigned from the position of professor at the ASFA (Athens School of Fine Arts), where he had been teaching a visual approach to contemporary art by means of photography, since 1999. From 1994 to 2016 he worked on a personal photographic approach to the work of Yannis Kounellis. He has had several solo exhibitions, such as: “Attention works in progress”, Alatza Imaret, Thessaloniki, 2018; “Something stupid”, Romantso, Athens, 2017; “Beyond Planning”, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, Athens, 2014; “Skeletons”, Benakis Museum, Athens, 2011; “All over the place”, New York Photofestival, 2009; “Photographs”, Central European House of Photography, Bratislava, 2008, “Judgment/”, Yeni Mosque, Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki, 2007; “Possesioni”, Centrο d’ Αrte Moderna e Contemporanea della Spezia (CAMeC), 2006; “Manolis Baboussis 1973-2003″, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, 2003. Ηe has participated in numerous group exhibitions in museums and art venues in Greece and abroad, such as “+ 9 Iera odos”, Athens 2019; “La verità è un altra:=”, Galleria Nazionale d’ Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, 2018; “Antidoron. Works from the EMST Collection”, Documenta14, Fridericianum, Kassel, 2017 and “The Body, The Soul and The Place”, State Museum of Contemporary Art (SMCA) at the National Art Museum of China, 7th Beijing Biennial of Contemporary Art, 2017. His works have been acquired by private and public collections. His monographs and albums as well as his poetry have been published by EMST, the Benaki Museum, CAMeC, Exantas, Smili and Futura publishers. He lives and works in Athens.

Info: Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, 48 Armatolon & Klefton Street, Athens, Duration: 3/10-9/11/2019, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu 15:00-20:00, Wed & Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, http://art-tounta.gr