In 2013 Outset Greece supported the group exhibition Hell as Pavilion at Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
The exhibition borrowed its title from the word HELL AS, as it appears in Jean-Luc Godard’s 2010 film Socialisme. Based on the pun created by the space in the word, the exhibition alluded to the recent 'demonization' of Greece as a result of the European crisis and aimed to serve as a subversive allegory on the absurdity of (co-)existence, which is also what art is having to deal with today, with a sense of urgency.
The Greek Pavilion could thus be understood as a fantasma, a premonition or a twinge of remorse, a disturbing idiorrythmy, the monster (teras) par excellence in the current temps des crises. The European bête noire hangs on a wall in an undetermined borderline condition considered here as a possible tactic; a laboratory of the para-logon (that which lies next to and beyond logos/reason); a precarious position from which current takes on humanism, punishment, radicalization, the collective and the connective can be reexamined.
The exhibition was conceived as a strange fresco gone wild, an inhabited migrant wall of "horrible mixtures", which brings together Greek artists from various generations, and, starting from the Byzantine tradition, explored a neglected field of rhizomatic relationships and unexpected affinities, and urges us to "read history in unforeseen ways", to imagine into existence new mobile and minor networks. Various forms of art (painting, drawing, film, pottery, etc.) created a hypertext, through which one could reflect on the matters raised in the show.
The participating artists represented different approaches and modes of expression: historic exponents of the avant-garde in Greek art and architecture coexist with contemporary creators and folk artists as well as with collective schemes of people who work on group projects in Greece and abroad, while the twin bond between language and image is explored through works presented to the public for the first time.
Hell as Pavilion could be perceived as a toolbox for the understanding of various Greek paraloga in the rather common and unsettled struggle to "be in" the present; as a chance to consider the viability of deviations, abnormalities and inconsistencies, in the xaos (chaos) of a situation where nations, states and all kinds of entities suspect and monster one another for economic misconduct and "lack of progress."
ON VIEW: 27th February - 4th April 2013
Achitectural concept: Yorgos Tzirtzilakis
Project team: Malvina Panagiotidi, Vassiliki-Maria Plavou, Yorgos Rimenidis
With the support of Messieurs Philip, Spyros Niarchos, Outset Contemporary Art Fund in Greece, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, AEGEAN AIRLINES and the Centre Culturel Hellénique de Paris.
