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Andreas Angelidakis, the artist who mixes ruins, sex, pop and tourist flats: "I'm not trying to be understood, rather to confuse"

2022-12-15T17:23:50.348Z


The Audemars Piguet Contemporary initiative is celebrating its tenth anniversary in Paris with the definitive work of the Greek artist, a commentary on how we have turned entire cities into a 'souvenir'


The Greek artist Andreas Angelidakis in his studio.

As a child, before studying Architecture and long before deciding to be an artist, Andeas Angelidakis read an article that left him amazed: it was about the Palladium nightclub in New York, a spectacular temple of nightlife designed in 1985 by the Japanese Arata Isozaki. .

“It was a mix of postmodern architecture and street elements,” says Angelidakis (Greece, 54), who ended up designing bars and nightclubs in his native Athens.

Something of all this could be found in

the Center for the Critical Appreciation of Antiquity

, the first individual exhibition of the Greek artist in Paris, which could be seen at the Niemeyer Center last October: an underground dome full of books and fragments of ruins foam rubber, disco lights, and a screen displaying colored columns and looping an operatic version of Donna Summer's disco hit

I Feel Love

, performed by Klaus Nomi.

The Espace Niemeyer in Paris hosted 'Center for the Critical Appreciation of Antiquity': the most ambitious work of the Greek artist Andreas Angelidakis, and with which he not only commented on current phenomena with humor, but also his own biography.

This kind of neoclassical and neokitsch nursery is also the fruit of ten years of work by Audemars Piguet Contemporary, the artistic initiative with which the watchmaker – famous for its coveted Royal Oak model – supports avant-garde artists.

A unique project because, through its curators, the Swiss house commissions a work, shows it to a wider audience than the author would reach on his own and, once the cycle is over, the work does not become the property of the company but of the artist.

Center for the Critical Appreciation of Antiquity

has various readings.

On the one hand, it is a comment on how Athens has made a brand of its ruins and how we have turned archeology into a pure

souvenir

.

“I am re-excavating the past to reorganize it: you can place the soft ruins however you want, they do not respond to a linear idea of ​​the past.

It is a way of critical appreciation of history”.

Overview of the work 'Center for the Critical Appreciation of Antiquity', by Andreas Angelidakis.

On the other hand, the piece cites more recent phenomena such as the effect of tourist apartments: a container placed in the center of the piece symbolizes this.

“During the pandemic, the only works that were going on were those for the renovation of tourist apartments, and the city was lined with containers for rubble,” explains Angelidakis.

One of the soft books is about being an Athenian citizen: “It's about me and how, growing up in Athens, I realized that at night the Temple of Zeus was a

cruising

spot .

Then I thought: 'This is not the same city as my parents'.

Everything is hidden in plain sight, although the Greek claims not to try to “be understood.

Rather try to confuse.

I almost always ask questions that I don't usually give answers to.

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Source: elparis

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