HOPE
MOUNTAIN - Kunsthalle Athena
December 4, 2010–February 28, 2011Kunsthalle Athena, Athens
Kunsthalle Athena had the honour to host the artist HOPE with his project MOUNTAIN / ΗΟΡΕ for the first time in its space. Embarking on the intentions of KUNSTHALLE ATHENA to encourage international artistic synergies that do not intend to promote states or national –hypothetical– attitudes but rather advocate specific localities, like neighbourhoods, and the contact between them, we were in the pleasant position to host the project MOUNTAIN / ΗΟΡΕ. The project involved on one hand the presentation of HOPE’s visual work, who in the latter years operates in the streets of Metaxourgeio and adapts this specific topography as his thematic axis and on the other hand the zine MOUNTAIN, in which the artist invited kindred artists from Athens and other localities of the world. HOPE invited visual artists, writers and musicians to create an artwork, to write a text or even lyrics reflecting the idea of a mountain. These works were all collected in a publication that bears the title “MOUNTAIN”. At the same time with the publication’s presentation an exhibition was held at KUNSTHALLE ATHENA with the original works from this edition. The circulation of the zine started from the building of KUNSTHALLE ATHENA as a gesture of reinforcement of the relationship between exterior spaces of circulation and indoor spaces.
Moreover, there was an exhibition of posters by HOPE, originally featured on walls of buildings around the district of Metaxourgeio. The exhibition location proved to be an essential criterion when it came to select the exhibits. There was an essential link between the place where the exhibition was mounted and the very form of the exhibition, since HOPE’s work was already presented and encountered at several spots around the Metaxourgeio area in a spirit of giving away things to strangers. Thus, the series of posters inside the exhibition space constituted a sequence which traces the visitor’s path around the exhibition and invited her/him from the interior to another potential route outside the building of Kunsthalle Athena, into the outdoors. Therefore, the specific exhibition space was rendered “unimportant”.
The images in HOPE’s work were playing on a system of oppositions and dualities: public / private space, black-and-white / colour, inside / outside. As a result, the inside and outside of buildings as qualities were open to intervention, making it thus hard to distinguish between public and private space. “The urban ugliness”, as the artist stated, “becomes a positive quality. And this accordingly evokes a MOUNTAIN.”
In duration of the evening, a performance titled “CARGO” also took place. In this performance, “the body of the artist becomes the load for a sarcophagus”. The sculpture of the performance was designed and constructed by HOPE and Petros Touloudis, while the video work and music was by HOPE. The event was accompanied by music from Lolek and Mary, while ABSOLUT VODKA kindly offered cocktails and drinks.
