Project Description
Yorgos Maraziotis
RUSH RASH RUSH
Nitra Gallery in Athens is pleased to present the new solo show of the multidisciplinary artist Yorgos Maraziotis; a site-specific installation that amplifies the artist’s research on the politics of space and on the manners that contemporary societies follow in order to inhabit various lands, both somatically or conceptually.
Having as a starting point the lecture Bauen, Wohnen, Denken by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, given in Darmstadt in 1951, the artist attempts to explore some of the questions that the philosopher set. Questions that concern the sentiments of constructing, of inhabiting, or even the ways we use, in order to conceptualise our presence on a land. By using various media such as sculptures, digital prints, textiles, natural matter and dialogue, he intervenes in the gallery’s space creating a landscape full of tension that blurs reality with the imaginary.
The audience is invited to wonder in space, to become part of the installation and carefully note that behind the seemingly balanced character of each artwork lies an uncanny sense of estrangement, violence, danger and threat. The hypnotic aesthetics that underlie the whole installation, make even more intense the artist’s intention to create a platform where antithetical concepts such as rawness/ elegance, private/public, danger/ safety co-exist.
In the course of the duration of the exhibition Maraziotis will collaborate with the architect and academic Dimitris Theodoropoulos for the creation of a participatory artwork that aims to seal the context of the whole show. Through the usage of dialectics, through writing and narrating, the two individuals will try to bridge architecture and visual arts and trace the sanctity that lies in our domestic lives. The outcome of their participatory gesture – that may take the form of a publication, a soundtrack, a digital presentation or even a compilation of thoughts that can never be expressed in public – will be presented in March at the premises of the gallery.
The exhibition RUSH RASH RUSH by Yorgos Maraziotis consists an invitation to a phenomenally intimate and serene landscape that carefully discloses its dangerous and upsetting real texture.
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Photo credits: Jason Faulter | www.jasonfaulter.com
Yorgos Maraziotis
Born in 1984, in Athens (GR), Yorgos Maraziotis is an MA graduate (Sculpture) of the Royal Academy in Antwerp. He has also studied Silkscreen at the School Of Visual Arts in New York City and holds a First Class degree in Visual Arts from the Wolverhampton University. He uses various media such as sculpture, installation, painting and publications and often works in thematic series. Since 2008, he has been a member of the participatory-art group November.
His multidisciplinary practice focuses on conceptual processes that recover historical visual identities, propose a study on the concepts of trace and memory, and explore the contrast between reality and fiction, in an index-like manner. Through his discipline he tends to architecturally intervene in space constructing intimate participatory settings that breed tension towards their viewers and make them wonder at their role. His artworks often gain a gestural narrative and attempt to co-exist strong antithetical notions, such as rawness/fragility, power/weakness, danger/safety.
His work has been exhibited in group and solo shows internationally, in galleries, art institutions and museums such as Marres House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht, Museum Tinguely, AC Institute New York City, School Of Visual Arts, Royal Academy Antwerp, CICA Museum South Korea, Benaki Museum Athens, Vetlanda Museum, Matadero Madrid, The American College in Greece, ReMap4 (Greece), Santorini Arts Factory, Beton7 Athens and Nitra Gallery Athens, among others. He has been a resident artist at MASS MoCA (MA, USA), at Isadora Duncan Dance Research Center (Greece) and at the Centre des Arts de La Rue (France). He currently lives and works in Antwerp.