19 Feb 2011

vamiali's gallery in Athens: new space and exhibitions

1st floor
MILTOS MANETAS, JONATHAN MONK, RICHARD WOODS
ground floor
CHRISTOF MASCHER 'drift wood chris'
basement
DIMITRA VAMIALI music compilation by VOYAGER & ALFONSO

Opening Friday 18 February 2011 at 20.00

18 February - 16 April 2011 Tuesday - Friday 12.00-18.00 Saturday 12.00-16.00

vamiali's gallery inaugurates its new space with three different exhibitions. At the ground floor, young German artist Christof Mascher has his first solo exhibition in Athens, titled 'drift wood chris'. At the first floor, works by Miltos Manetas, Jonathan Monk and Richard Woods are on display. In the basement, Dimitra Vamiali presents a new installation with music compilation by Voyager & Alfonso.

The new space is a new point of departure for vamiali's gallery. A traditional 70's existing building was renovated and expanded with two additional storey, with the concept that it will accommodate a gallery, an artist's studio as well as private spaces. The mixed use of the building, a contemporary art gallery and apartments grows in 5 levels, and is divided into 2 horizontal zones. In the first zone, the new gallery space is separated among three floors, occupying 450sq.m. It includes 3 exhibition spaces and gives the opportunity to install more than one exhibitions and projects at the same time. The basement area will host more experimental projects where the ground and first floors will be occupied by the main exhibition spaces, offices and storage areas and an artist's studio.

On the ground floor, Christof Mascher presents new works on wood and paper, in various dimensions. Mascher's visual language has density, with lots of information and references, but 'airy' and 'ethereal', covering a long way of influences. In his scenarios, we recognize elements from Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Breughel and Edvard Munch, Phillip Guston and Per Kirkeby, even from earlier works by Jonathan Borofsky. In Mascher's use of repetitive architectural motifs we meet highlights from the 80's adventure games, old cartoons, expressionist silent films and East German DEFA films from the 70s. Influenced by his active experience in the hip-hop scene during the '90s, his paintings are associative and collage like. Landscape's 'leftovers' are 'essential' and 'ghostlike' where architecture is often 'under construction' or already in decline. In the visual world of Mascher meaning is not that important, the iconographic elements are dissolved, leaving all the options open to possibilities. Cristof Mascher was born in 1979 in Hanover and studied at the University of Braunschweig.

On the first floor, Miltos Manetas presents a series of digitally processed large-scale drawings, mounted in plexiglas. The drawings, portraits of women who passed from his life, are created with rather fast fine lines and fluidity, recording the memory in a contemporary visual vocabulary.
Richard Woods participates with his characteristic two-dimensional works on wood using the technique of marquetry. Wood fragments from his known printed patterns for floors, are pasted on a new wood surface creating structures like virtual cartoonish explosions.
Jonathan Monk's work, entitled 'Peanuts', is an enlarged photo of a 50s model where a René Magritte-like hat is hung to cover her naked body. The work entitled 'One in twenty five in one' consists of 25 identical digital prints. The artist photographed the cover image of the pack of the photographic printing paper and then prints that image to each of the 25 sheets of photo paper that was inside the box.

In the basement, Dimitra Vamiali creates a site-specific installation with a vintage vespa and words made by local stone leftovers placed on the floor, in a semi-dark environment with music compilation by invited guests Voyager & Alfonso, exploring and contextualizing the notion of loss.