Kostis Velonis, Tatiana Trouvè, Daniel Milohnic
Grand Re-Opening
Friday, March 27, 2009, 7 pm
Kunstverein in Hamburg
Der Kunstverein, seit 1817.
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
How One Can think Freely in the Shadow of a Temple
March 28 – June 21, 2009
Tatiana Trouvé
Bureau of Implicit Activities: archives and projects
March 28 – June 21, 2009
Daniel Milohnic
Sleeping Buddha
March 28 – December 31, 2009
Kostis Velonis’ (*1968, lives in Athens) is presented for the first time in Germany with an expansive installation on the upper floor of the Kunstverein. The substantial work consisting of various sculptures will generate suspenseful gaps, leaving space for the events to be staged by the Kunstverein and for two further exhibitions by other artists, which will be inserted later. It will hence provide a frame and stage for the entire 2009 programme of the Kunstverein. The works of the three artists and their coordinated succession will gradually consolidate into a thematic whole. In this manner the year’s project will not only involve visitors in an on-going development process but also render its emergence transparent.
He combines found materials into fragile and autonomous sculptures whose point of departure lies in the failure of modern utopias. From Russian Constructivism to the Bauhaus and the 1968 movements, he takes up the grand narratives and edifices of ideas, carrying them over into subnarratives of personal struggles, passions, and solitude. Literary figures like Don Quixote serve as models for melancholy heroes amidst lost dreams of revolution. For Velonis, failure goes beyond the negative element of resignation, offering a possibility of linking great goals back to the subject. Even though sorrow and loss are always present, aspiration remains a driving and poetic force in his works.
Tatiana Trouvé (*1968, lives in Paris) opens her “Bureau of Implicit Activities,” one of her extensive sculptures with which she has been occupied for years (since 1997), in the ground floor gallery. The bureau, a model-like sculpture composed of various modules, has grown out of disappointments, opportunities, advances, and rejections, and hence of innumerable ideas that had ground to a halt in the midst of applications, waiting, and bureaucratic work. Energy fields constitute the space of her works, which persist in unresolved tension. Whereas Velonis’s works are projection surfaces for utopian projects and collective interests, Trouvé’s works are displays of individual wishes and dreams, while implying the resistance with which they meet in the form of standstill and reserve, telling of the persisting struggle to establish a platform for realisation.
In the entrance area, Daniel Milohnic (*1969, lives in Frankfurt am Main) has placed a highly distinctive visual image. The “Sleeping Buddha” will accompany the entire annual programme, standing for the educational concept of the Kunstverein. The purpose is to capture the interest of people from various strata of society who generally have little to do with art. The focus is on accommodating a lack of knowledge about contemporary art, with the aim of addressing all ages and micro-communities in the city. With its vast dimensions, the sculpture changes perceptions of spatial proportions, transforming the foyer into an exhibition space.
March 27, 2009, 7 pm
Grand Re-Opening
March 29, 2009, 12 am – 6 pm
Yamas – artist talk with Kostis Velonis, movies, music and Greek food
June 20 – June 21, 2009
Bazon Brock and the generation of 1968
The exhibition of Kostis Velonis is funded by CORA-Kunststiftung Hamburg and Hamburgische Kulturstiftung. The exhibition of Tatiana Trouvé is funded by Institut francais / CULTURESFRANCE.
The Kunstverein is funded by Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde für Kultur, Sport und Medien.
For further information please contact Beate Anspach, Tel. +49(0)40 32 21 58, presse@kunstverein.de