Jannis Kounellis exhibition at the Bernier/Eliades Gallery

Jannis Kounellis, photo by Boris Kirpotin

The Bernier/Eliades Gallery hosts the fifth solo exhibition of Jannis Kounellis which is his first in Greece for 16 years. The exhibition consists of new works that includes large-scale sculpture and site-specific installation.

Jannis Kounellis is widely recognized as a leading figure of Arte Povera and a seminal artist whose practice spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance and set design for the theatre and opera. For half a century his work has used coal, gold, fire, raw meat, stone, earth, knives, doorways, steel, live horses and piano music to expose fundamental cultural antitheses. Kounellis is acknowledged worldwide as a visual philosopher building up a new vocabulary of diverse materials to compose a poetic history of meaning.

Kounellis’ first exhibition in Greece was the inaugural exhibition of the Jean Bernier Gallery in March 1977. Subsequent solo shows with the Bernier/Eliades Gallery followed in 1979, 1985 and 1994 when Kounellis’ simultaneously created a monumental retrospective installation of 30 years on the cargo-ship Ionion in the Athenian port of Piraeus. Also significant was his participation in “Outlook” curated by C. Ioakimides in 2004 at the Benaki Museum, Athens.

Born in Piraeus, Greece in 1936, Kounellis attended the School of Fine Arts in Athens before moving to Rome in 1956 where he enrolled at the Academia di Belle Arti. His first solo show in 1960 “L’Alfabeto di Kounellis” at the Galleria della Tartaruga in Rome is now regarded as a vital precursor of Arte Povera from 1967.

Important solo exhibitions include Ambika P3, London, 2010; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2008; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, 2006; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1997; MoCA, Chicago, 1986; and a traveling exhibition at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Obra Social, Caja de Pensiones, Madrid, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1981. Kounellis holds an Artist Room at the Tate Modern, and works in the Guggenheim and MoMA NY Collections amongst other museums and foundations worldwide.

The exhibition opened its doors yesterday and will last till the 13th January 2011. At the moment I am writing this post, Jannis Kounellis gives a lecture at the Athens Concert Hall (Christos Lambrakis Room). Tomorrow, in Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki (CACT), Warehouse B1, Thessaloniki Port area at 19.00 Jannis Kounellis will discuss for his work with Katerina Koskina, curator of the exhibition "Islands Never Found'' , art historian and president of the board of SMCA. The event is organised in collaboration with the Instituto Italiano di Cultura in Thessaloniki.

Bernier/Eliades Gallery Opening Hours: Tuesday - Friday 10:30 - 20:00, Saturday 12:00 - 16:00

Source: press release from Bernier/Eliades Gallery and State Museum of Contemporary Art.