ATHINA IOANNOU ABOUT ARTWORKS PRESS CONTACT - Irene Laub
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ATHINA IOANNOU
ABOUT
ARTWORKS
PRESS
CONTACT
ATHINA IOANNOU
Athina Ioannou, Exhibition view of Resituations at Chapelle des Penitents (FR), 2010
Born in 1968 in Athens (GR)
lives and works in Düsseldorf (DE)
Athina Ioannou’s artistic production consists of pictorial and minimalist interventions linked to a dialogue with the
space and architecture that support them, as well as with the context of the site of exhibition. Ioannou observes the
environment deeply, establishing links with its materials and its inhabitants, collecting objects of local provenance
which result in compositions that question the space and give it a new lecture.
The artist usually works with textiles - common or precious - cutting them in different forms and soaking them in
linseed oil, sometimes tracing vertical graphite lines on the material. The oil enhances the physical qualities of the
fabric, intensifies the colours and makes the painted surface transparent. Due to the manual repetition of certain
resources, Athina Ioannou’s work shows similar - but never identical - visual results, through which the artists searches
aesthetic satiety through a deep exploration of the same subject. Ioannou’s work is the result of perseverance and of a
prolonged search, which, with a consistent style, explores themes such as rhythm, transparency, light, movement and
creates compositions that reveal themselves little by little.
Athina Ioannou studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and the Art Academy of Düsseldorf, under the
tutelage of Jannis Kounellis and Daniel Buren. She has participated in individual and collective international exhibitions,
among which we can highlight : The song of Nightingale, Insel Hombroich foundation, Neuss (DE), Who is afraid of the
walls, The Benaki Museum of Islamic Art, Athens (GR), L’emprise du lieu curated by Daniel Buren in Dommaine Pommery,
(FR), A Tiger Cannot Change Its Stripes, at CultuurCentrum Strombeek/Gent (BE), curated by Luk Lambrecht and Lieze
Eneman and Gigantisme at FRAC Grand Large, Dunkerque (FR).
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
SHOWS (SELECTED) ATHINA IOANNOU
2020 The intimate consciousness of time, Irène Laub Gallery,
Brussels (BE) RESIDENCIES
A rose is a rose, Perianth Hotel, Athens (GR)
2019 ARCH Athens (GR)
2019 Gigantisme, FRAC Grand Large , Dunkerque (FR)
2015 L’ASPIRATEUR, Contemporary art space,
Paysages de Formes, cur. Yolande de Bontridder, Pont-
Narbonne (FR)
Scorff (FR)
Floating Gestures, ARCH Athens (GR), 2019 2013 Gast Atelier, Stiftung Insel Hombroich,
Neuss (DE)
2 0 1 8 Mythologies, Irene Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE)
The Materiality of the painterly event, cur. Denys 2007 Espace d’art contemporain HEC, Paris (FR)
Zacharopoulos, City of Athens Arts Centre, Athens (GR)
Geometries, Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens (GR) 2006 Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (FR)
2017 Polifonías, Galería Hilario Galguera, Mexico City (MX) PRIZES
La Pergola, MRAC Musée Régional D’Art Contemporain
Languedoc-Roussillon, Sérignan (FR) 2013 Jubiläums Stiftung der Sparkasse Neuss (DE)
IN DE WIND, Cultuurcentrum Strombeek/Gent (BE) Stiftung Insel Hombroich, Düsseldorf (DE)
2016 L.A.C. Lieu d’Art Contemporain, Narbonne (FR) 2012 Kunststiftung NRW, Düsseldorf, (DE)
A-rena Anacapri, Capri Clou espace d’art, Capri (IT)
Toile de Jouy-regards contemporains , HEC 2007 Espace d’art contemporain HEC, Paris (FR)
contemporary art space, Paris (FR)
Vertigo Arte, Centro Internazionale per la Cultura e le 2006 Prix de la sculpture de l’Ambassade de Grèce
Arti Visive, Cosenza (IT) en France, Paris (FR)
2015 Manifestation L’Aspirateur, Contemporary art space 2005 Reisestipendium, Istanbul; Kunstakademie,
and Lapidaries Museum, Narbonne (FR) Düsseldorf, (DE)
Who is afraid of the Walls? (II), Macedonian Museum of
Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (GR) 2004 DAAD (Deutsche Akademische Austausch
The song of Nightingale, Insel Hombroich foundation, Dienst), Bonn (DE)
Neuss (DE)
2013 Jaunes, Galerie des Petits Carreaux, Paris (FR)
Who is Afraid of the Walls?, cur. Maria Marangou, The
Benaki Museum of Islamic Art, Athens (GR)
2012 Quartetti, cur. Ulla Wiegand, Neonhalle, Bochum, (DE).
Petits Chorals, Tina Miyake Showroom, Düsseldorf (DE)
2010 Resituations, Chapelle de Penitents, Aniane (FR).
Toccata e Fuga, Vertigo Arte, Centro Internazionale per
la Cultura e le Arti Visive, Cosenza (IT)
2009 Imperium/Che viva Mexico!, Galeria Hilario Galguera,
Leipzig (DE) Athina Ioannou, Mythologies, 2018, collage and pencil on Fabriano paper,
24 x 33 cm
Dragée, Galeria Hilario Galguera, Leipzig (DE)
2008 Wallpaintings 9+1/1+9, BKSM Cultuurcentrum, COLLECTIONS
Strombeek & Cultuurcentrum, cur. Luk Lambrecht &
Musée Régional d’Art Contemporain Occitanie,
Koen Leemans , Mechelen (BE).
Sérignan (FR)
Athina Ioannou, Antonello Curcio, cur Jackie-Ruth
L.A.C. Lieu d’art Contemporain, Narbonne (FR)
Meyer , Centre d’art le LAIT, Castres (FR)
Deutsche Bank AG, Paris (FR)
Amande, L.A.C. Lieu d’art contemporain, Narbonne (FR)
Galerie des Petits Carreaux, Paris (FR)
Daniel Buren collection, Paris (FR)
2007 L’Emprise du Lieu, Expérience Pommery #4, cur. Daniel
Benaki Museum, Athens (GR)
Buren, Domaine Pommery, Reims, (FR).
Damien Hirst collection, London (UK)
De l’Amande au Tournesol, Espace d’art contemporain
HEC, Paris (FR)
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Floating Gestures at ARCH, Athens (GR) 2018
Floating Gestures, solo show at ARCH Athens (GR), 2019
Light, weight, materiality, colour and the architectural elements of a space come together in Athina Ioannou’s work.
The artist works primarily with found materials, particularly textiles, which she then cuts, pastes and transforms by
dipping them into linseed oil. These new arrangements that arise, from her personal reading of the space for which
they are destined, become architectural interventions and spatial gestures vested in the histories of painting from the
Early Renaissance through the modernist and minimalist movements of the 20th century, all the way to today. These
“hanging paintings” as she calls them, alongside her other colourful arrangements and drawings, carry both the locality
of where they were made as well as her personal and continuous quest within the practice of painting.
Floating Gestures is a culmination of Athina’s two-month residency at ARCH and is accompanied by a fully illustrated
catalogue including texts by Denys Zacharopoulos and Atalanti Martinou.z
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
ATHINA IOANNOU
Mythologies, solo show at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE), 2018
Greek artist Athina Ioannou (1968), currently residing in Dusseldorf, maximizes and reinterprets painting with minimal
and economic means. Her sensuous ‘abstract’ painting - which she prefers to refer to as ‘plus-painting’ - arises from
the ‘intensification’ of ready-made carriers (canvas, felt, commercial textiles...) through the patient all-over saturation
of her work with linseed oil. In this way, she creates canvases that lose their original color, become transparent and play
freely with the light as well as the mostly white color of the underlying, supporting wall. Athina Ioannou sacralizes the
banal; she transforms her ready-made textiles into profound art, and brings this about through a wide variety of formal
applications and constellations. Her work is space-sensitive; animated by the changing, existing light that takes hold of
the color, which is then altered and made unique with every change of the light’s intensity.
This solo exhibition presents a sampling of her artistic practice. Canvasses are hung next to one another at a short
distance from the wall and let the light swirl across their surfaces saturated with linseed oil - works that also
immediately bring to mind recent paintings from artists such as Palermo and Günther Förg. What is nice is that one can
literally look through the work; nothing is hidden or masked - the art, here, presents itself as disarmingly transparent
as an intriguing X-ray photo. Small irregular elements of materials such as felt and other fabrics – fully saturated with
linseed oil – are pinned to the wall. A large number of these beautiful fragments are brought together in an intuitively
composed constellation that will, as such, always look different in other installations at other places in the future. The
beautiful gouaches function, as it were, as architectural possibilities or geo-structures in which these fragments are
contained. And yes, she has recently started using her fingers as a brush. The artist lets dense, pasty or light-footed
blue fingerprints float above poems placed on sheets of paper, concealing as it were the impossibility of language to
express life’s essences. Poetry is the central concept in her oeuvre; she poeticizes the essential importance of light
through unfathomable, unique colors. She is a ‘modern’ painter who eschews gratuitous and pathetic expressions of
grand emotions by manipulating her well- chosen subject so as to make her art into a projection of absolute sensuality.
Athina Ioannou brings an exceptional form of painting, by means of a traceable method in which transparency stands
for painting itself.
– Luk Lambrecht, art critic and curator at CultuurCentrum Strombeek
Exhibition view of Mythologies at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE) 2018
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
ATHINA IOANNOU
Athina Ioannou, installation view of Silver Plated Gardens Hanging Gardens in «Geometries» at the Agricultural University of Athens (GR), 2018
project by the Onassis Cultural Centre
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
ATHINA IOANNOU
TAKE FIVE + 1
QUESTIONS TO THE ARTIST
Interview of Athina Ioannou by curator Luk Lambrecht, 2018
1. How did you come to work in a non-orthodox way with colour, and was the influence of your scholarship at the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf very important?
In actual fact, the presence of colour in my work derives from the material itself and beyond a pictorial process. I work
very much alone on my questions regarding painting and the extension of the same into space and context. My very
first experience (after Athens) was in Rome as a young artist moving there for studies in 1987. I was very intrigued and
fascinated by the paintings and frescoes in the churches, looking at something intensely without knowing how it could
be transformed into something contemporary. One day while I was in a library in Rome, I came across a book depicting
a discussion between 4 artists in Basel which was to illuminate my questions. The discussion was actually a dialogue
between Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Anselm Kiefer and Enzo Cucchi. This was to become my train to Düsseldorf.
My first site specific work was in Rome in 1994 and that same year I decided to move to Düsseldorf. That was also the
point of an important meeting with the work of Beuys, Palermo and a number of young contemporary artists living in
Germany. Additionally, I have extensively studied the work of Marcel Duchamp, who interested me in relation to the
‘ready-made’.
Consequently, in 1997 I started following my questions on painting, reducing the act of painting through the medium,
by emerging canvases into linseed oil. Working by installing six meter canvases on the brick wall of my atelier in
Düsseldorf (photo) using every ounce of power in my body, with a piece of graphite against the wall and from top to
bottom vertically, I used to trace graphite lines on regular rhythmical intervals. The colour of the “painting” was always
yellowish due to the linseed oil. More than a painting it was a question on painting and definitely an action in itself. I
was imagining to build one body of work (of painting) without the possibility of separating anything; every part of the
work was made and born together, likewise the painting. The aesthetic result of the “drawing” derived from structure
of the walls (as a frottage), the linseed oil that was there to fix the graphite on the canvas, as well as the colour of the
painting.
I began my post graduate studies at the Academy of fine arts in Düsseldorf, with Jannis Kounellis in 1997, then in 2000
with David Rabinovitch and then in 2002 next to Daniel Buren. During my time in the Kunstakademie, my studies into
painting were closely related to artists such as Mark Rothko, Pollock, Palermo, Beuys, Kounellis, Gordon Matta-Clark and
the beginning of ancient Greek painting. The Russian avant-garde, therefore Malevich and very importantly the painter
Mondrian and his work relating to architecture as well as my several studies on Marcel Duchamp and the ‘ready-made’.
2. Your work is a perception of colour vis-à-vis all kind of supports - I suppose that for several reasons you choose
your supports very carefully?
The act of painting is a need.
Therefore, I have a direct relationship with my work and its body of work.
The colour is a part, not to be separated from the main body of work, so the material acts as support, as well as the
surrounding space and context.
3. Your work has at first glance nothing to do with our world… Does that mean that, as a person with Greek roots,
you don’t want to introduce societal matters into your work?
I am deeply concerned with social matters, everyday life, life and death, memory. I am involved with and attracted to
all kinds of traces left behind ephemeral or not that is also why history concerns me so deeply. I am equally involved
with society as with the universe, with the end and with infinity.
Nevertheless, what I may not actually need to do is to try to describe all the above beyond my work.
I certainly believe in dialogue, to build a language, to be beyond art differently. In that sense, I also believe that art is
political, as an open question to the other, to all.
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
ATHINA IOANNOU
4. What is the importance of drawing, reading and studying in your artistic practice, which has little to do with
progress and evolution?
I draw a lot. Drawing is an act of memorizing, of activating memory, of thinking differently; also, drawing for me is a
form of freedom; a need similar to writing, walking or breathing.
I am deeply interested in memories, music, poetry and all kinds of testimonies by authors. Similarly, good literature and
theatre; films and filmmakers always intrigue me.
5. The relation to architecture is quite important in your exhibitions-not the space but the specific architecture. Do you
work in Situ with the same deep sense and feeling with which you work in the surrounding architecture?
Actually, I cannot separate architecture from context. Certainly, I work with the space site specifically and consequently,
I am highly sensitive to topography, history, anthropology and life.. The Greeks did not build temples anywhere as the
Romans did, but had an ongoing questioning towards the divine and the universe related to nature.
I enjoy the history of the ancient Greek theatre in which the Greeks initially looked for a natural cavity to build on, for
the power in a site, to reproduce the voices and the echoes. The Romans could build a theatre anywhere. It is certainly
another kind of relationship to the site.
In my eyes, the artwork always remains an entire body. I cannot separate a part without losing the entire body.
Undoubtedly, I also work with parts and fragments but always in relation to that body of work.
6. What can a broader public understand under the great title >Mythologies< you gave your first solo-show in Belgium?
“Mythologies” are stories. Through my Greek roots I have a very natural and direct, uninterrupted relationship to
Mythos. Symbolically, giving my exhibition in Brussels this title, was a way of talking allegorically and not descriptively
about my stories and giving the artwork another kind of dimension and extension.
“Love otherwise”, “Silver plated gardens”, “Hanging paintings” “The fragile memory” are some of the titles of my works
in the exhibition.
“Mythologies” are not describing Greek ancient myths. As a Greek person exhibiting in a European country, I have the
need to link myself to reality, visually posing, beyond history, new questions to the contemporary.
Therefore, contemporary myths, contemporary stories.
Athina Ioannou, Exhibition view of Polifonías at Galería Hilario Galguera (MX), 2017
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
ATHINA IOANNOU
The intensification of presence
by Denys Zacharopoulos, 2013 (extract)
Athina Ioannou, Exhibition view of A Tiger Cannot Change Its Stripes at Museumcultuur
In Gothic churches, the light, as it comes in through the windows, always cancels out the architectural form. The
architecture is seen only on the exterior, in the constant folds of stone that is sculpted to such a degree that it becomes
almost immaterial and the light can give it movement. On the exterior, the surface of the stone disappears into the
constant motion of light, but it has no depth. The depth remains a dark mystery in the interior, into which you must
enter. Even so, once you enter the church, all this dark mass, the closed world, as seen from the outside, guarded by
monsters and the narratives by which the church participates in the realm of reality and nature, disappears. Monsters,
demons and narratives, stone, forms and nature disappear and you find yourself suspended in the light which, from
the architectural whole, keeps only the rhythm, the rhythmic alternations of light which allow the different parts of
the whole to function co-ordinately and in whole. The sense of depth here is not just atmospheric but metaphysical.
Of course, anyone who enters such a church following the logic by which it was envisioned and built, does not enter
as we would today go into a shop, but enters bowed and looks firstly, and for some time at the ground, the flooring.
That is why in these churches the floors too are laid out like mosaic compositions, such as in St. Mark’s in Venice
with its stupendous marbling or like labyrinths such as the famous one at the Cathedral of Chartres. One spends
some time before being able to raise one’s head to see the diffusion of the light. Here, one must think that it has to
do with a process of syllabling before reading, composure before reflection, which does not keep us suspended only
in the interior light but also as to what we think we are or are able to say. The internal and external world is opposed,
confused and revised. When Monet paints the Cathedral of Rouen, he shows us the lightnd all the fluctuations of the
sky that do not represent any Jesus but all the fluctuations of a man in the universe.
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16
ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Athina Ioannou, Onze Kerk, Abdijkerk Grimbergen, 2016
When the exhibition of Athina Ioannou takes place at the Museum of Islamic Art, it has not to do with Islam since the
space could very well be a Jewish museum. It has, however, to do with the actuality of the place and with the totality
of a civilization and not of only one culture. It is not confined to the selectiveness of an urban culture, but comes to
confront a much broader set of codes that make up a civilization. At the same time as the exhibition of Athina Ioannou
in Athens, Yiannis Kounellis presents a work at the Stathatos Megaron (Museum of Cycladic Art), that goes against the
idea of the ‘seemly’ culture as imparted by a historical mansion: the beautiful rich urban house, its décor and especially
the picture of a material and moral comfort, together with the certainty of a bourgeois class that feels that the world
is its oyster. In a manner analogous to that of the Gothic church, Yiannis Kounellis presents us with all the demons,
monsters and narratives in the foreground so as to lead us progressively to the other side, to that place where, if one
finds the time and strength to focus, one can find one’s own centre of gravity. One finds he gravity of things and of
oneself, in a way that, when from the razors’ edge one lifts his head, he finds himself not in the sky, of course, but in
history. The viewer then becomes a citizen and finds his place as a completed historical person in the world. Thus, in
the work of Athina Ioannou, as in that of Kounellis, if a metaphysical aspect is present, it is no longer that of a religious
world. The place of religion belongs to culture. If one wants to see the metaphysical itself in religion, then one should
consider civilization in such a way so as to think philosophically about humankind’s active place in the world. And this
is a place that is not on offer by anyone. You must assume it yourself. That’s the meaning of historical consciousness.
It is important for one to emphasise that if our history is revealed to us through its contradictions, the awareness of
these contradictions does not necessarily constitute a collective system and record. For example, when some years
ago they asked Yiannis Kounellis if he remains politically to the «left», he replied «yes», but not because he had read
Marx’s Capital, but because of that child who stole a loaf of bread because it was starving and the police and society
persecute it for the rest of its life. The refusal of society and its institutions to recognize that someone can be starving
simultaneously generates a sense of solidarity or compassion, and the awareness of injustice, revealing a sense of
justice that is different from its abstract legal meaning. Justice in this case, is expressed as an urgent sense of the
man who does not want to die, be hurt, be hungry, and to be able not only to survive but to live. It is very important
for one to consider this distinction when discussing churches, states, regimes, philosophical systems that are deduced.
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
It is no coincidence that the same Victor Hugo who wrote the
story of the child in Les Miserables that Kounellis is referring
to, and through the manhunt reveals all the underground
dealings, both actual and conceivable, of the modern
metropolis, also writes the Hunchback of Notre Dame. In
this work of his, written in the course of the 1830 revolution,
the meaning of the church is transposed from the centre of
town and its monument - the great Gothic metropolis and
its edifice - into every home and individual consciousness
wherein the book enters. From the moment that the book
exists, there is no longer a need for Muhammad to go to
the mountain, since the mountain can enter the life of all
common folk. Ever since Gutenberg onwards, the bible is
in every home and everyone can read it, appropriate it and
convert it into personal conscience. By abolishing papal
infallibility, Luther also allows everyone to know what is
true. Hugo claims the right for man to be able, through his
conscience, to stand equal in the face of the world and the
universe. This means for him to be a citizen of the world, to
inhabit the world. The «stone book of the world» as Victor
Hugo calls the history of architecture and its pinnacle, the
Gothic churches, is abolished by Gutenberg’s paper book
through which starts the whole of the Renaissance.
The book of the Renaissance is not only of text but also of
image, illustration and imagination, motion and freedom.
Thus, and having spoken of reading earlier, Poussin when
in writing from Italy about his paintings which he sends to
France insists on the need «for one to read both the history
Athina Ioannou, exhibition view at ARCH Athens (GR), 2019 and the painting.»
And of course, history is primarily the story depicted in the painting, the story which the artist has painted, but is also
the history of the art of painting itself. That is to say, one sees simultaneously what the artist has painted and how he
has painted it; because history is not the same everywhere as are not the conditions of life and the consciousness of
it. You must see and look at the painting. In those days, someone in Paris did not paint like someone in Rome. This has
to do neither with the same light, nor the same colours, nor the same techniques, nor the same concept, nor the same
picture. Thus should be understood the language of painting, because painting is a language. It may be that the root of
this language is very old and perhaps common to all histories of painting, but languages change from place to place,
from period to period. The history of painting is not only the history of oil painting. There are forty kinds of histories of
painting and forty types of painting taking part in the history of painting and art. That which we call art, is not only in
relation to the fact of how one paints. By the same token, if Victor Hugo said, «Notre Dame» is a stone book it doesn’t
mean that the cathedral is a book but that it has the complexity of a book. It contains chapters, paragraphs, a table
of contents, a bibliography. Of particular complexity is exactly that which was called «a painting» in 1600, being the
same as that which we have since then called a painting and no longer an image, which means that it is a multiple and
multilevel listing and recording of things. It is the compilation of a thing that re-enacts and contains the sum of the
elements that constitute it.
It is overpowering, the phrase wherein Nietzsche declares that «we do not communicate with thoughts, but with
movements and mime signs which we subsequently read on the key of thought.» As the notes in music, so too are
these signs read on a key and they are not even thoughts or words, but sounds, gestures, movements. thought can
mean nothing outside of the language that articulates it and words mean nothing if you do not read them in the
language in which they acquire meaning. That which applies to music or philosophy also applies to painting. These
languages do not evolve linearly, but via their contradictions and contrasts. One who studies the history of civilization,
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
from the classic style will pass into its opposite which is the romantic. An artist however, passes through a conception
of things that may be termed as classic style, though not to the next conception, but instead to a daily preoccupation
and reality with that which constitutes his fixation. Charles Rosen, in his remarkable book The Classic Style, writes
that the most difficult thing is not for one to devise a style (i.e. to formulate a code), but to be able to continue to keep
it active. Accordingly, the effort needed by Beethoven, for example, to maintain the minimum of classicalness in his
work, is ceaseless. Through that, perhaps romanticism may come through, because romanticism takes this effort into
account and makes it heroic but this occurs in absentia of Beethoven. If Beethoven continues to this day to be such an
acclaimed musician, it is because this superhuman effort he makes is of no concern to him at all, or rather, it is never
perceived as something that concerns his work. He never follows set themes and even his loss of hearing, despite
the theories surrounding it and the commentary, is not part of his work but solely of his life. You cannot understand
Beethoven in the terms of Van Gogh who cuts off his ear, who commits suicide, who completes the existentialism of
a person.
But even if we know Beethoven’s biography, his work stands beyond it. Beethoven does not write music, he constructs
it. He tears down to build. He eliminates anything that is expected, denies any common ground. And that is where
a huge turn is made, because this construction is neither painting nor sculpture. The form is neither in marble as is
Michelangelo’s, nor in a conceptional world of images as in the case of Poussin, but as it was at the time of Cezanne
and Rodin, music is a composition of small pieces of a broken world that one must reconstruct. Even though the final
picture that we receive is in sum, Rodin, for example, never made a body in whole, but by taking the hand of one, the
arm of another, many different parts and different moments, he composes them into a whole person, who resembles a
person, but whose problem is not for it to look like a specific person. What concerns the artist is for the work to stand
in lieu of the person, of humankind. Not even to give shape to humanity but to undertake its conscience. To assume
the responsibility of the form, which means to assume man’s ability to be contradictory, to be other than himself, to
understand that what is before him, to not be afraid of that which is not seen, to be able to take the measure of shadow
and of darkness, and be able to take the measure of shadow and of darkness, and be able to give it back to us, not
through some lighting but from within the light. The lighting would have been something that would be ideologically
very intense. We light things up in the theatre; the central stage is lit up, as is the audience. Perhaps a whole society can
be able to think of the Enlightenment when we all take part, each one with their light, so that we can be reciprocally lit
up. But if one on his own should want to light up the city, then he probably becomes the director of the Olympic Games.
That is certainly a profession, something like a super electrician, but it has nothing to do with art and perhaps not even
civilization. There where falls a ray of light, if one can take a first step, then perhaps a second until he finds the shadow
in front of him and persists until he once again finds a ray of light that allows him to take a few steps more, then he
understands as much the daily process by which Beethoven was able to construct that which we call music through
the elimination and fragmentation, as does Nietzsche in his philosophy or Kounellis in his painting, and observes in the
basements of the Museum of Islamic Art, the way in which Athina Ioannou registers her work within the fragmented
spaces, bringing the singular consciousness of time and the combinative consciousness of place into the light.
- Denys Zacharopoulos
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Athina Ioannou Manifestation at l’Aspirateur, Narbonne (FR) 2015
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Athina Ioannou Manifestation at l’Aspirateur, Narbonne (FR) 2019
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Athina Ioannou Manifestation at l’Aspirateur, Narbonne (FR) 2015
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Mythologies at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE) 2018
Exhibition view of Mythologies at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE) 2018
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Mythologies at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE) 2018
Exhibition view of Mythologies at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE) 2018
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Exhibition view of Mythologies at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE) 2018
Exhibition view of Mythologies at Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE) 2018
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
ARTWORKS
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : The kimono gardens (red)
Year : 2019
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on fragmented kimono vest, stainless welded wire mesh,
iron frame
Size : 100 x 100 x 2,2 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : The kimono gardens (red)
Year : 2019
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on fragmented kimono vest, stainless welded wire mesh,
iron frame
Size : 100 x 100 x 2,2 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : The kimono gardens (yellow)
Year : 2019
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on fragmented kimono vest, stainless welded wire mesh,
iron frame
Size : 100 x 100 x 2,2 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : De la Mémoire
Year : 2018
Medium : Installation
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric, pins and postcards
Size : 250 x 260 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Hanging Garden (Jardin Suspendu)
Year : 2018
Medium : Installation
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric and pins
Size : 200 x 300 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Love Otherwise (Small Hanging Paintings)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric, iron bar
Size : 62 x 171 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Love Otherwise 1 (Large Hanging Paintings)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric, iron bar
Size : 112 x 100 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Love Otherwise 2 (Large Hanging Paintings)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric, iron bar
Size : 98 x 100 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Love Otherwise 3 (Large Hanging Paintings)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric, iron bar
Size : 126 x 100 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Love Otherwise 4 (Large Hanging Paintings)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric, iron bar
Size : 120 x 100 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile (The Blue words)
Year : 2018
Medium : Installation
Description : 5 paintings (Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on
poems, oil painting on Fabriano paper) on a display table
Size : 87 x 180 x 55 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 1 (The Blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 2 (The Blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 3 (The Blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 4 (The Blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 5 (The Blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 6 (The blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm (58 x 43 cm framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 7 (The blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La mémoire fragile 8 (The blue works)
Year : 2018
Medium : Painting
Description : Deep cobalt blue and ultramarine, fingerprints on poems, oil
painting on Fabriano paper
Size : 48 x 33 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : La Rose et la Croix
Year : 2018
Medium : Installation
Description : Linseed oil on coloured fabric, steel bars and iron wire
Size : 246 x 60 x 60 cm
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Mythologies
Year : 2018
Medium : Work on paper
Description : Collage and pencil on Fabriano paper
Size : 24 x 33 cm / 35,5 x 44,5 cm (framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Mythologies 2
Year : 2017
Medium : Painting
Description : Gouache on Stonepaper
Size : 61 x 81 cm (framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Mythologies 3
Year : 2017
Medium : Painting
Description : Gouache on Stonepaper
Size : 61 x 81 cm (framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Mythologies 4
Year : 2017
Medium : Painting
Description : Gouache on Stonepaper
Size : 61 x 81 cm (framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Mythologies 5
Year : 2017
Medium : Painting
Description : Gouache on Stonepaper
Size : 61 x 81 cm (framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Mythologies 6
Year : 2017
Medium : Painting
Description : Gouache on Stonepaper
Size : 61 x 81 cm (framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
Title : Mythologies 7
Year : 2017
Medium : Painting
Description : Gouache on Stonepaper
Size : 61 x 81 cm (framed)
Edition : Unique
www.irenelaubgallery.com | 29 Rue Van Eyck, 1050 Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ATHINA IOANNOU
PRESS
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16MU-INTHECITY (FR)
28.11.2018
1/3 - Muriel de Crayencourt
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16MU-INTHECITY (FR)
28.11.2018
2/3 - Muriel de Crayencourt
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16MU-INTHECITY (FR)
28.11.2018
3/3 - Muriel de Crayencourt
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16ARTS LIBRE - LA LIBRE BELGIQUE (FR)
14.11.2018
- Claude Lorent
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16TL MAGAZINE (EN)
18.12.2018
1/6 - Luk Lambrecht
Les mythes
sont des histoires
/Mythologies
are Stories
Take Five+1 – Athina Ioannou
Interview de /by Luk Lambrecht, curateur de l’exposition /exhibition curator
Photos: Hugard & Vanoverschelde, courtesy of Irène Laub Gallery
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16TL MAGAZINE (EN)
18.12.2018
2/6 - Luk Lambrecht
Appetizers At h in a Ioa n n o u 89
2.
1 — L'Horloge /The Clock, 2018, feutre accroché à un portrait de style Renaissance /felt, pin, on a Renaissance style portrait
2 — Mythologies, 2018, collage et crayon sur papier Fabriano /collage and pencil on Fabriano paper
L’artiste grecque Athina Ioannou (1968), artistique d’Athina Ioannou. Les toiles des empreintes bleues denses, pâteuses
résidant actuellement à Düsseldorf, sont suspendues les unes à côté des ou bien légères, au-dessus de poèmes
ma ximise et réinterprète la pein- autres à une courte distance du mur, tracés sur des feuilles de papier, sem-
ture avec des moyens minimes et permettant à la lumière de tourbillonner blant masquer l’impossibilité du langage
économiques. Sa peinture « abstraite » sur leurs surfaces saturées d’huile de lin d’exprimer l’essence de la vie. La poé-
sensuelle - qu’elle préfère appeler « plus- - des œuvres qui rappellent immédiate- sie est le concept central ; elle poétise
painting » - naît de l’ »intensification » de ment les peintures récentes d’artistes l’importance essentielle de la lumière
supports tout faits (toile, feutre, textiles tels que Palermo et Günther Förg. Les à travers son usage de couleurs inson-
commerciaux…) par la patiente satu- pièces peuvent être littéralement tra- dables et uniques. Peintre « moderne »,
ration totale de la surface à l’huile de versées d’un regard ; rien n’est caché elle évite l’expressivité gratuite et gran-
lin. Elle crée ainsi des toiles qui perdent ou masqué - l’art se caractérise ici par diloquente en manipulant son sujet,
leur couleur d’origine, deviennent trans- une transparence désarmante, comme choisi avec précision, afin de transfor-
parentes et jouent librement avec la une intrigante photo radiographique. De mer son art en une projection d’absolue
lumière, ainsi qu’avec la couleur souvent petits éléments irréguliers faits de feutre sensualité. Athina Ioannou présente une
blanche du mur porteur sous-jacent. ou d’autres tissus - entièrement saturés pratique picturale exceptionnelle, grâce
Athina Ioannou sacralise le banal ; elle d’huile de lin - sont fixés au mur. Un grand à une méthodologie aisément lisible dans
transforme ses textiles prêts à l’emploi nombre de ces fragments sont rassem- laquelle la transparence est l’essence
en œuvres d’une grande profondeur, et blés dans une constellation composée même de la peinture.
y parvient en employant un large éven- intuitivement, qui ne sera jamais iden-
tail d’expérimentations formelles. Son tique d’une installation à l’autre et dans TLmag : Comment en êtes-vous arrivée à
travail est sensible à l’environnement, un endroit différent. Les gouaches fonc- ce travail hétérodoxe de la couleur ?
animé par la lumière changeante qui tionnent en quelque sorte comme des Quelle a été l’influence de votre bourse
s’empare des couleurs, lesquelles sont possibilités architecturales ou des géo- d’études à l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de
alors modifiées et rendues uniques à structures dans lesquelles ces mêmes Düsseldorf (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) ?
chaque changement d’intensité lumi- fragments sont contenus. Et l’artiste a Athina Ioannou : La présence de la cou-
neuse. Cette exposition monographique récemment commencé à utiliser ses leur dans mon travail dérive en réalité
présente un échantillon de la pratique doigts comme pinceau. Elle laisse flotter des matériaux eux-mêmes et dépasse le
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16TL MAGAZINE (EN)
18.12.2018
3/6 - Luk Lambrecht
Appetizers At h in a Ioan n ou 90
© Hugard & Vanoverschelde
3.
© Hugard & Vanoverschelde
4.
TL # 30
3 & 4 — Vues de l'exposition /Exhibition views, Mythologies, 2018, galerie Irène Laub, Brussels, BE
www.irenelaubgallery.com | Rue Van Eyck 29 | 1050, Brussels, Belgium | +32 2 647 55 16TL MAGAZINE (EN)
18.12.2018
4/6 - Luk Lambrecht
Appetizers At h in a Ioa n n o u 91
processus pictural. Je travaille de façon travail sur l’architecture, mais aussi de est incontestablement lié à l’espace
très solitaire sur les questions que je me Marcel Duchamp et ses ready-made. et s’adapte spécifiquement aux sites ;
pose au sujet de la peinture et de son je suis donc très sensible à la topogra-
extension à l’espace et au contexte. Ma TLmag : Votre travail se caractérise par phie, à l’histoire, à l’anthropologie et
toute première expérience artistique hors l’application de couleurs sur toutes sortes à la vie. Les Grecs ne bâtissaient pas
d’Athènes remonte à 1987, lorsque j’ai de supports. Apportez-vous beaucoup de leurs temples n’importe où, comme le
quitté ma ville pour aller étudier à Rome. soin au choix de ces supports ? faisaient les Romains, mais s’interro-
J’étais profondément intriguée et fasci- A.I. : L’acte de peindre répond à un geaient constamment sur la relation qui
née par les peintures et les fresques des besoin ; j’entretiens donc une relation unissait le divin et l’univers à la nature.
églises, que je fixais intensément en me très directe avec mon travail et mes J’aime l’histoire de l’apparition du
demandant comment les transposer dans œuvres. La couleur constitue une par- théâtre dans l’Antiquité grecque, pour
le monde contemporain. Mes interroga- tie indissociable de mes œuvres ; les lequel les Grecs cherchèrent initiale-
tions se dissipèrent soudain en consultant matériaux tiennent donc lieu de sup- ment une puissante cavité naturelle
un ouvrage dans une librairie de Rome, qui port, tout comme l’espace et le contexte permettant de reproduire les voix et les
rapportait un dialogue à Bâle entre quatre environnants. échos. Les Romains pouvaient quant à
artistes : Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, eux construire leurs théâtres n’importe
Anselm Kiefer et Enzo Cucchi. Il devint TLmag : Votre travail ne présente à pre- où et entretenaient certainement un
mon billet de train pour Düsseldorf. mière vue aucun lien avec le monde dans autre type de relations avec l’espace.
J’ai donc déménagé en 1994 à Düsseldorf, lequel nous vivons… Faut-il en conclure L’œuvre d’art reste toujours à mes yeux
où j’ai découvert le travail de Joseph qu’en tant qu’artiste d’origine grecque, une entité indivisible, dont une partie
Beuys, Blinky Palermo et d’autres artistes vous ne souhaitez pas introduire de ne peut lui être retirée sans anéantir
contemporains vivant en Allemagne. J’ai questions sociales dans votre travail ? l’ensemble. Je travaille aussi avec des
par ailleurs largement étudié le travail de A.I. : Je m’intéresse beaucoup à la vie fragments, mais toujours en lien avec le
Marcel Duchamp, dont les ready-made quotidienne, à la vie et à la mort, mais corps de l’œuvre.
ont retenu mon attention. En 1997, j’ai aussi à la mémoire. Je travaille avec
commencé à axer mon travail sur les toutes sortes de traces, éphémères ou TLmag : Comment le grand public peut-
interrogations qui m’habitaient autour de non, ce qui explique en partie ma passion il comprendre « Mythologies », le titre
la peinture. J’ai réduit l’acte de peindre pour l’histoire. Je me soucie autant de la que vous avez donné à votre première
à son support, en plongeant mes toiles société que des concepts d’univers, de exposition solo en Belgique ?
dans de l’huile de lin. Je fixais mes toiles fin et d’infini. Toutefois, la représentation A.I. : Les mythes sont des histoires avec
de six mètres au mur en briques de mon de tous ces domaines dans mon travail lesquelles j’entretiens des relations
atelier de Düsseldorf et, avec toute la ne relève pas d’un besoin. Je crois résolu- naturelles, directes et permanentes
force de mon corps, je traçais avec un ment dans la capacité du dialogue à bâtir du fait de mes racines grecques. En
morceau de graphite des lignes verticales un langage et à dépasser l’art par d’autres donnant symboliquement le titre
contre le mur, de haut en bas, à intervalle moyens. À cet égard, je considère égale- de « Mythologies » à mon exposition
rythmique et régulier. La « peinture » ment l’art comme un acte politique, dans bruxelloise, je cherchais à présenter
présentait invariablement une cou- la mesure où il formule des questions qu’il mes histoires sous une forme allégo-
leur jaunâtre, produite par l’huile de lin. adresse à l’autre et à tout le monde. rique et non descriptive, mais aussi à
Plus que des peintures, ces toiles incar- conférer une autre dimension et une
naient des interrogations autour de la TLmag : Quelle importance revêtent le autre portée aux œuvres. Parmi les
peinture et des actions en elles-mêmes. dessin, la lecture et l’étude dans votre œuvres qui y sont exposées figurent
J’envisageais la possibilité de créer une pratique artistique, qui ne semble guère notamment « Love otherwise », « Silver
œuvre en m’imposant de ne rien sépa- porter sur le progrès ou l’évolution ? plated gardens », « Hanging paintings »
rer : toutes les composantes naissaient A.I. : Je dessine beaucoup. Le dessin et « The Fragile Memory ».
d’un même élan, tout comme la peinture. exige de mémoriser, d’activer sa mémoire « Mythologies » ne parle pas de mythes
L’aspect esthétique du « dessin » résul- et de penser différemment. À mes yeux, de l’Antiquité grecque. En tant qu’ar-
tait de la structure des murs, qui lui était il représente aussi une forme de liberté. Il tiste grecque exposant dans un pays
imprimée par frottage, tandis que l’huile s’agit d’un besoin similaire à celui d’écrire, européen, je ressens le besoin de me
de lin permettait de fixer sur la toile le gra- de marcher ou de respirer. Je suis pas- raccrocher à la réalité en posant vir-
phite et la couleur de la peinture. sionnée par les souvenirs, la musique, la tuellement de nouvelles questions au
En troisième cycle à l’Académie des poésie et toutes sortes de témoignages monde contemporain. Les my thes
Beaux-Arts de Düsseldorf, j’ai fré- émanant de leurs auteurs. Je suis tou- contemporains appellent donc des his-
quenté Jannis Kounellis en 1997, David jours intriguée par la bonne littérature, le toires contemporaines.
Rabinovitch en 2000 puis Daniel Buren théâtre, les films et les réalisateurs.
en 2002. J’y ai étudié la peinture au tra- Entretien avec Athina Ioannou
vers d’artistes tels que Mark Rothko, TLmag : La relation à l’architecture, qui menée en 2018 par le commissaire
Luk Lambrecht à l’occasion de son
Jackson Pollock, Blink y Palermo, ne se limite pas à l’espace, revêt une exposition Mythologies, montée à la
Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis et grande importance dans vos expositions. galerie Irène Laub (Bruxelles),
G ord on M at t a- C lark , d e s d é b u t s Travaillez-vous de la même façon in situ et du 26 octobre au 22 décembre 2018.
de la peinture en Grèce antique, de dans un environnement architectural ? www.irenelaubgallery.com
l’Avant-Garde russe et donc de Kazimir A.I. : Je ne peux pas dissocier l’archi- www.athinaioannou.com
@athina_ioannou
Malevich, de Piet Mondrian et son tecture de son contexte. Mon travail
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18.12.2018
5/6 - Luk Lambrecht
Appetizers At h in a Ioa n n ou 92
future. The gouaches function as wall of my atelier in Düsseldorf using every
architectural possibilities or geo- ounce of power in my body, with a piece of
structures in which these fragments are graphite against the wall and from top to
contained. And yes, she has recently bottom vertically, I used to trace graphite
started using her fingers as a brush. The lines on regular rhythmical intervals. The
artist lets dense, pasty or light-footed blue colour of the “painting” was always yel-
fingerprints float above poems placed on lowish due to the linseed oil. More than a
sheets of paper, seemingly concealing the painting it was a question on painting and
impossibility of language to express life’s definitely an action in itself. I was imagining
essence. Poetry is the central concept in to build one body of work (of painting) with-
her oeuvre; she poeticizes the essential out the possibility of separating anything;
importance of light through unfathomable, every part of the work was made and born
unique colours. She is a ‘modern’ painter together, likewise the painting. The aes-
who eschews gratuitous and pathetic thetic result of the “drawing” derived from
expressions of grand emotions by structure of the walls (as a frottage), the
manipulating her well-chosen subject so linseed oil that was there to fix the graphite
as to make her art into a projection of on the canvas, as well as the colour of the
absolute sensuality. Athina Ioannou brings painting.
5.
an exceptional form of painting, by means I began my post graduate studies at the
of a traceable method in which Academy of fine arts in Düsseldorf, with
Greek artist, Athina Ioannou (1968), transparency stands for painting itself. Jannis Kounellis in 1997, then in 2000
currently residing in Dusseldorf, with David Rabinovitch and then in 2002
maximizes and reinterprets painting with TLmag: How did you come to work in next to Daniel Buren. During my time
minimal and economic means. Her a non-orthodox way with colour, and in the Kunstakademie, my studies into
sensuous, ‘abstract’ painting – which she was the influence of your scholarship painting were closely related to artists
refers to as ‘plus painting,- develops from at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf very such as Mark Rothko, Pollock, Palermo,
the build up of ready-made carriers important? Beuys, Kounellis, Gordon Matta-Clark
(canvas, felt, commercial textiles…) and Athina Ioannou: In actual fact, the pres- and the beginning of ancient Greek paint-
through the patient, all-over saturation of ence of colour in my work derives from ing. The Russian avant-garde, therefore
the work with linseed oil. In this way, she the material itself and beyond a picto- Malevich and very importantly the painter
creates canvases that lose their original rial process. I work very much alone on Mondrian and his work relating to archi-
colour, become transparent and play my questions regarding painting and tecture as well as my several studies on
freely with the light as well as the mostly the extension of the same into space Marcel Duchamp and the ‘ready-made’.
white colour of the underlying, supporting and context. My very first experience
wall. Athina Ioannou sacralises the banal; (after Athens) was in Rome as a young TLmag: Your work is a perception of
she transforms her ready-made textiles artist moving there for studies in 1987. I colour vis-à-vis all kind of supports - I sup-
into profound art, and brings this about was very intrigued and fascinated by the pose that for several reasons you choose
through a wide variety of formal paintings and frescoes in the churches, your supports very carefully?
applications. Her work is space-sensitive; looking at something intensely without AI: The act of painting is a need. Therefore,
animated by the changing, existing light knowing how it could be transformed into I have a direct relationship with my work
that takes hold of the colour, which is then something contemporary. One day while and its body of work. The colour is a part,
altered and made unique with every I was in a library in Rome, I came across not to be separated from the main body of
change of the light’s intensity. This solo a book depicting a discussion between work, so the material acts as support, as
exhibition presents a sampling of her 4 artists in Basel which was to illuminate well as the surrounding space and context.
artistic practice. Canvasses are hung next my questions. The discussion was actu-
to one another at a short distance from ally a dialogue between Joseph Beuys, TLmag: Your work has at first glance
the wall and let the light swirl across their Jannis Kounellis, Anselm Kiefer and Enzo nothing to do with our world… Does that
surfaces saturated with linseed oil – works Cucchi. This was to become my train to mean that, as a person with Greek roots,
that also immediately bring to mind Düsseldorf. you don’t want to introduce societal mat-
paintings by Blinky Palermo and Günther I moved to Düsseldorf in 1994. That was ters into your work?
Förg. What is nice is that one can literally also the point of an important meeting AI: I am deeply concerned with social
look through the work; nothing is hidden or with the work of Beuys, Palermo and a matters, everyday life, life and death,
masked, rather, the art presents itself as number of young contemporary artists memory. I am involved with and attracted
disarmingly transparent, as an intriguing living in Germany. Additionally, I have to all kinds of traces left behind ephemer-
Z-ray photo. Small, irregular elements of extensively studied the work of Marcel al or not that is also why history concerns
materials such as felt and other fabrics Duchamp, who interested me in relation me so deeply. I am equally involved with
– fully saturated with linseed oil – are to the ‘ready-made’. society as with the universe, with the
pinned to the wall. A large number of these Consequently, in 1997 I started following end and with infinity. Nevertheless, what
beautiful fragments are brought together my questions on painting, reducing the act I may not actually need to do is to try to
in an intuitively composed constellation of painting through the medium, by emerg- describe all the above beyond my work.
that will, as such, always look different in ing canvases into linseed oil. Working by I certainly believe in dialogue, to build a
TL # 30
other installations at other places in the installing six meter canvases on the brick language, to be beyond art differently. In
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