The Way We Live Now & Conversations Vol. II

The George Economou Collection is pleased to announce two new publications: The Way We Live Now, accompanying its first contemporary group exhibition featuring works from the collection’s holdings, and Conversations, Vol. II, the second volume in its ongoing Conversations series.

As part of its commitment to advancing discourse in contemporary art, the collection marks its exhibitions and public programs through publications that extend and deepen the ideas explored within them. Bringing together essays, conversations, and contributions by artists, writers, curators, and scholars, these publications offer a lasting record of the perspectives and exchanges generated through the program.

The Way We Live Now
Published in conjunction with The Way We Live Now, the collection’s first contemporary group exhibition with works culled from its holdings and the first of its kind within the exhibition program, the publication features contributions by Hilton Als, Lisa Brice, Heather Ive, Ben Okri, and Charles Ray.

Co-curated by Hilton Als and Ann Philbin in close collaboration with Skarlet Smatana, director of The George Economou Collection, the exhibition presents works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Lucas Arruda, Louise Bourgeois, Lisa Brice, Xinyi Cheng, Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, David Hockney, Katharina Fritsch, Allison Katz, Florian Krewer, Victor Man, Charles Ray, Andy Robert, Jenny Saville, Mohammed Sami, Lorna Simpson, and Henry Taylor.

Drawing its title from Anthony Trollope’s novel, The Way We Live Now considers the ways in which artists respond to the complexities of the present and to the forces that shape contemporary life. Across questions of intimacy, politics, identity, and collective and individual existence, the exhibition brings together artists whose practices offer distinct ways of observing, interpreting, and negotiating the world around them.

Structured around three loose sections—Intimacy, Politics, and Being—the exhibition moves between the personal and the political, the intimate and the social. The works explore the ways love and desire inform our understanding of intimacy; the vulnerable body as it moves through political and social structures; and the experience of being, both individually and collectively, in a world marked by connection, division, isolation, and change.

Conversations, Vol. II
Taking as its point of departure several themes explored in Dana Schutz’s exhibition The Island, the second publication in the Conversations series examines the role and cultural significance of the artist’s studio. Acclaimed writer and critic Martin Gayford considers the various meanings and functions of the artist’s studio. From a creative haven to a site of communal exchange, from a social stage to a commercial enterprise, the studio has assumed many roles in the production of art. Rather than a fixed setting, the studio emerges as an ever-evolving space shaped by the artist’s practice, temperament and way of seeing. Drawing on his own experience as the subject of portraits by Lucian Freud and David Hockney, Gayford suggests that within the studio the making of art is inseparable from the acts of looking at and reflecting on art.

The publication also features a conversation with Alison Gingeras, in which she reflects on the learnings and limitations of first- and second-wave feminism as well as on the restricted scope of many women-only exhibitions. Discussing her recent transhistorical curatorial endeavor at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Gingeras considers the history of women in art as one defined by continuity, agency and sustained artistic production. In recognition of gender as a social construct, yet beyond identity politics, Gingeras reframes the enduring “woman question” in today’s social and political landscape.

The public program is curated by Vassilios Doupas, in collaboration with Skarlet Smatana, director of the George Economou Collection.

The George Economou Collection is a private collection located in Athens, Greece. Rooted in history, social awareness and aesthetics, the collecting activity began evolving in the 1990s with a focus on early twentieth-century European art and has expanded to include an important holding of postwar and contemporary art.

Open to the public with free admission, the space in Athens organizes survey exhibitions, presenting works by artists from the collection, alongside loans from international musuems and private collections. Accompanying publications feature contributions by internationally renowned art theorists, curators, and artists.

A public program of curated conversations is organized annually, providing historical and cultural context to the exhibitions and fostering critical discourse on art and culture. The collection also supports artist-driven projects, cultural institutions, and programs of the highest standard, encouraging and promoting ingenuity, creativity, and the pursuit of artistic excellence.

Among the international institutions and museums it supports are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Whitney Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Solomon R. Guggenheum Museum, Dia Art Foundation, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Pinault Collection, Fondation Beyeler, Stedelijk Museum, and others.