Indepth Arts News:
"Anatomy Revised: Thanos Zakopoulos"
2006-01-17 until 2006-03-17
Unorossodue
Milan, ,
IT Italy
"Anatomy Revised" is the first personal exhibition in Italy of the Greek artist Thanos Zakopoulos (Athens, 1978) currently living in Venice. Subsequent to his studies of product design at the Southampton Institute (UK) he follows the post graduate course of visual arts in IUAV (Venice). The works presented in this exhibition are only a part of the artists' multiple activities that vary from photography to design and from installations to digital art.
"Anatomy revised" is a duality, a dialogue between opposites as well as a confrontation between classical anatomical images (Western) and Manga comics (Japanese) in an attempt to find similarities and at the same time extreme differences. The artist by utilising a fixed pattern (the Manga images appear always on the right) and by creating a single reading level (negative prints create a fluctuation of the white marks against the black background) de contextualises both elements which emerge in an unusual correlation. The elimination of the dialogues and the unsettling presence of the empty balloons urge the viewer to actively engage with the images by creating new narratives. The result is confounding and leads to a vision of raw and vicious images which are not however mundane or closed in themselves: the cynic research of the images reveals cultural and temporal aspects of the body very distant one from another.
The catalogue (an integral part of the exhibition) underlines the scientific element of the whole body of work by organising in sections the succession of the images as in an anatomy atlas. Last, but not least, the titles (Ċċrevised table IĊċ, Ċċrevised table IIĊċ etc.) divulge the detached and sterilised approach with which the artist conducted the entire research.
Catalogue credits:
Curated by: Matteo ù Bologna, Alessandro Mancassola and Thanos Zakopoulos; text: Alessandro Mancassola and Barbara Ceriani Basilico
Recent exhibitions 2005:
'89.ma COLLETTIVA', FONDAZIONE BEVILACQUA LA MASA, VENICE
'II BEIJING INTERNATIONAL ART BIENNALE', MILLENNIUM MUSEUM, BEIJING,CHINA
'FLOATING SITES' [workshop and artistic interventions inside the 51st Biennale], organised by nKA|ICA & IUAV, 51st BIENNALE D'ARTE DI VENEZIA, VENICE
'CASTING' [project conception and realisation, member of group casTiNg], FONDAZIONE BEVILACQUA LA MASA & 51st BIENNALE DI VENEZIA, VENICE
'MAPENNING' [group exhibition] curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Armin Linke, FONDAZIONE BEVILACQUA LA MASA, VENICE
'UNBUILT ROADS' [participation in DOMUS CIRCULAR] curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, STADIO DI SAN SIRO, MILAN
Related Links:
| |
|