let's supper, mr. Iolas / resurrection RE

An art show in the Garden of Villa Iolas

in collaboration with the Municipality of Agia Paraskevi

Concept and curated by Naira Stergiou & Eriphyli Veneri

Supported by NEON Organization for Culture and Development and Marni Films Independent Film Production Company

Dimokratias 6, Agia Paraskevi, Athens

12 - 19.07.2019

Alexandros Iolas welcomes Andy Warhol for a Last Supper in his fabled Villa in Agia Paraskevi. The relationship between the two men is central to the concept of the show. Iolas assigned Warhol the Last Supper series; after its production and exhibition in 1987 they both died a few months apart.

The marble table of the vandalized Villa Iolas becomes the core of Let’s Supper, Mr. Iolas | Resurrection RE as a remnant of the Villa’s glorious days, as an enigmatic locus of accumulated narratives. With the uninterrupted projection of one of the works of the series on the surface of the table the scene of the Last Supper will be taking place, or better, will be re-enacted, throughout the exhibition.

Twelve artists-”banqueters”, twelve artistic approaches, are symbolically invited to the event to compose it. The works will be installed in the Garden of the Villa as well as on the building’s shell. The gates will open to the public daily when the sun sets and the Dinner is served.

Participating artists:

GENERAL PHOTOS:

EXHIBITS / ARTWORKS:

The Last Supper

projection on the marble table of Villa Iolas, curatorial intervention

Ιntervention on the marble table of the Dining Room of the Villa Iolas - Detail from Andy Warhol’s series The Last Supper (1986), 130 x 300 cm, 2019

Poka-Yio

Airbnb Laundry

mixed media installation, 3,70 x 1 m, 2019

A couple of friends decided to turn enterpreneurial so they invested their savings into buying an apartment and letting it through Αirbnb. Their own home turned instantly into an endless laundry. When we met, after their first month, I asked them how are they doing and they answered: very well, yet there is a thing we can’t handle; to wash in our washing machine the shitted bed-sheets, so we throw them away.

HOPE

Untitled

ceramic sculptures / courtesy the Breeder Gallery, 2018

HOPE’s universe is made of sacred symbols of yesterday and today, past and present speak in dissonance, creating new systems of ideals, challenging the rules of symmetry and perfection and creating a unique reading of what we assume to be already established.

Campus Novel

Coronation

installation, dimensions variable, 2019

Site-specific intervention on the Villa’s building shell. Inspired by the ambiguous semiology of decorative elements detected on site; these elements were submitted to re-processing.

Kostis Stafylakis

Who Snatches Greece

performance, 2019

The classicistic architectural decoration of the courtyard of Villa Iola becomes the throne of Kostis Stafylakis. The scenery is dominated by the phrase "Who snatches Greece", caption of a press release by Eleftheros Typos newspaper (1985). Stafylakis desecrates musical extracts from celebrated operas, singing verses of political party hymns and other light-weight folk chants of the ‘70s.

Errands

Talking to Plants

10 players with headphones, texts, photovoltaic lights, dimensions variable, 2019

The practice “talking to plants” acknowledges each tree of the garden as an autonomous personality. We talk to plants, they listen and understand. In some places, this practice is recognized as a profes- sion which aims to heel plants.

The trees of Iolas' garden were the witnesses of this house's habitation. ERRANDS record and utter confessions and stories from the house's life, placing them as an in-situ sound installation on the garden's trees. Visitors can listen to the whispers and read confessions to the trees. The installation “talking to plants” aims to empower the trees to turn the garden into a forest, hiding eventually the building in it.

Vassilis Vlastaras

Hot Summer - Make Love… Not War

video installation, dimensions variable, 2019

Summer 1987:

Alexandros Iola’s death, June 8, 1987

Eurobasket Final Greece - USSR June 14, 1987 Deadly heatwave, end of July, Athens, 1987

Ilona Staller (Cicciolina) visits Athens, August 1, 1987

*containing scenes from:

Cicciolina – Hot Summer 1987, directed by Pavlos Michail, Greka Film ERT, EUROBASKET ‘87 FINAL_ USSR-HELLAS,

Greek ads 1987

Phoebe Giannisi

Tithonus

sound installation from the audiovisual poem Tettix, 9' 07'', 2012

Tithonus is the mortal lover of Goddes Eos, the Goddess of Dawn. He asked her to turn him into an immortal, but forgot to asked to be granted eternal youth. So he lies inside a cage in his old body reduced to a voice that sings incessently. He is transformed to a dry cicada. Old age and love, Kavafis poetry, body, remembrance, desires accomplished and forgotten at the edge of life's end. Poetry from Konstantinos Kavafis, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Phoebe Giannisi, Omara Portuοndo.

Panos Charalambous

Smoker’s Room - Tobacco Archives

video 6', Tobacco Area, 1986-2016

The configuration is as follows: a general area (a general tobacco area) is defined, which consists of two subareas: 1. the Smokehouse, as a vacant space, as a sort of no man’s land, no man’s time, and

2. the Archive, as a hypomnesic locus. The first aim is to open up a field of possibilities for organizing familiar experience, a terminal station with multiple connections and new interpretations. The second aim is to create a public sphere for discourse and action, a sphere where smoking is openly allowed, providing seamless visibility to smokers and casting a positive light on the smoking heads, in spite of their negative social constructions.

The Ghost-Villa of Michalis Aslanis in Mykonos

footage by Mykonos TV (2018), curatorial intervention

August 2013. Fashion designer Michalis Aslanis is found dead in his apartment in Kolonaki from an overdose of sleeping pills, an aftermath of his economic disaster and disgrace. The luxurious villa in Mykonos, his place of relaxation, known for its elegant decoration, expensive furniture, artwork, and famed parties, is nowadays property of the state. Left to the mercy of time and weather conditions, the present image of the house is that of rust, abandonment and ravage. A Ghost-Villa. Footage by Myko- nos TV from 2018 (duration: 1’ 43’’).

Alexandros Psychoulis

I Was Lying About Lying to You

graffiti, dimensions variable, 2019

I Was Lying about Lying to You is a graffiti-style intervention on the brutal recent additions on the building of the Villa Iolas. These additions are nothing more than the blocking up of every opening with cement tiles. The interior is condemned to continuous darkness and to a silence that many would have liked to impose on Iolas himself during the last years of his life. The graffiti representations have a reference to the truths that - as Iolas himself was daclaring - were hiding in his genius lying.

Panos Amelides

The Sound of Eating

sound installation, 6 x 6 m, 2019

Eating has many meanings and the process of gathering to eat together may suggest and reveal differ- ent types of relationships, surpassing the simple activity of nourishment. The act of gathering togeth- er creates memory, is memory. The installation seeks to trigger this memory related to commensal eating. To allow the listeners to distance themselves from their mobile phone and listen to the sounds they produce and hear while eating. In other words, to sink in a sonic "shower" of chewing sounds.

Naira Stergiou / Eriphyli Veneri

Ela N' Agapithoume, Darling + Little Death

sculptural installation, mixed materials, dimensions variable, 2019

Ela na Agapithoume, Darling, series of sculptures by Naira Stergiou.

Apotropaic objects and a Satyr-guard for each banqueter, ensure the success of the Dionysian eve- ning. Dinner is ready, the guests arrived. The evil is exorcised, the champagne bottles open. Cheers! Touto mi kai touto si / One for you and one for me / Ela na agapithoume, darling / Unaffected by the evil eye. Let the party begin!

Eiphyli Veneri’s fountain entitled Little Death is placed in the Garden of the amorous summer night. The evening’s climax, the moment between high and low, zenith and decline, is paralleled with the sensory and ephemeral erotic act and gastronomic pleasure. The sculpture is embellished with artifi- cial as well as natural and edible flowers, which will be perished with the flow of time.

Madelyn Roehrig

Figments: Conversations with Andy

video, 1h 32’ 52’’, 2009-2019

Figments: Conversations with Andy is a project exploring segments of daily life at Andy Warhol’s grave at St. John Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. In 2009, Madelyn Roehrig’s once-occasional visits to his grave became more frequent. She started taking digital video, and iPhone cameras with her. She documented the items left behind by visitors including Campbell's soup cans, Coke bottles, written notes, religious figures and flowers. Visitors also “conversed” with Andy by talking with him about a variety of personal and professional issues -including asking him for help with ro- mantic relationships gone bad, being sued for art work, getting through art critiques without crying, and inspiration for creating. After 10 years of daily documentation at his grave, Andy is not dead. In afterlife he is a “figment” of everyone’s imagination transforming ordinary lives into the art of daily life.

The Figment Project

live stream of Warhol’s grave in Pittsburgh

a collaboration of EarthCam and The Andy Warhol Museum, curatorial intervention

In 2013, EarthCam in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum commemorated Andy Warhol’s 85th birthday by launching a live video feed of his grave. The stream is viewable 24 hours/ seven days a week worldwide. The collaborative project is titled Figment, after the artist’s statement that we would like his tomstone to remain blank, without an epitaph or name, or even better, he would want to say “figment” on it. During his childhood, Warhol and his deeply religious family were members of the Catholic Church and attended weekly liturgies. His funeral took place on February 27, 1987. He is buried alongside his parents, Julia and Andrej Warhola, at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in his home- town Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (U.S.).

photos by Eriphyli Veneri / Naira Stergiou and Fanis Vlastaras