Artworks by Yannoulis Halepas from the Onassis Collection to DESTE Foundation

Photo: Pavlos Fysakis

21 Greek and Cypriot artists have as a starting point an installation by Urs Fischer’s works and open the dialogue about the fine lines between order and chaos, stasis and flux, structure and fragility. Among the artists from different generations and modalities, is also the acclaimed sculptor of modern Greece, Yannoulis Halepas, creating a universe where everything can be reversed at the DESTE Foundation in Nea Ionia.

Three artworks that create their own “corner” in the exhibition space by Yannoulis Halepas. Drafts, manikins by the great artist from Tinos island, who decided to follow the career of a sculptor in a society in which all were becoming marble artists.

Photo: Pavlos Fysakis

About the exhibition

The term “anti-structure” was coined in 1969 by cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983) to describe this stage of perpetual transformation during which “normal social roles and rules are temporarily voided; structural hierarchies are flattened or inverted; and/or symbolic or socially constructed boundaries are abrogated.”

Whereas the dominant ideology du jour, driven by its own version of the Protestant Ethic, was that any such breakdown would result in anomie and angst, Turner recognized its possibility and potential. He noticed that it is exactly during such moments of dissolution and great happenstance that culture reboots itself, “a proto-structural domain in which new symbols, models, and paradigms arise-as the seedbeds of cultural creativity.”

It is not unusual to find such pockets of clandestine novelty simmering deep in the underground, the pregnant margins of normative order. It is in these lands of strangers and exiles, that one finds fertile ground for radical thought and very strange ideas. It is these ideas, cultivated in the fringes of institutionalized etiquette that bring forth novel ways of dress, posture, and expression, attitudes that when fully formed feed back into the system to either break or make the mainstream.

The show features works by: Yannoulis Halepas, Diohandi, Dora Economou, Andreas Embiricos, Urs Fischer, Yannis Gaitis, Sotirios Kotoulas, George Lappas, Tony Moussoulides, Aliki Panagiotopoulou, Rallou Panagiotou, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Nausika Pastra, Georgia Sagri, Lucas Samaras, Christiana Soulou, Takis, Iris Touliatou, Giorgos Tourkovasilis, Pantelis Xagoraris, Marina Xenofontos, and Takis Zenetos

Duration
June 3, 2021 — October 27, 2021

Opening Hours:
Wednesday 12:00-20:00
Thursday 12:00-20:00

More info

Photo: Pavlos Fysakis

About the Onassis Collection

The Onassis Collection includes works by major Greek and international artists, representing a wide range of artistic movements and periods set in dialogue with one another. The thrilling, non-linear and unpredictable world of the Onassis Collection highlights the dynamic relationship the past has with the “here and now”. Within this world, one can discover works by Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco) and Jannis Kounellis, Auguste Rodin and Yannoulis Halepas; works by Konstantinos Parthenis, Nikolaos Gyzis, and Nikiforos Lytras as well as Maria Papadimitriou, Jannis Varelas, and Thanassis Totsikas; works by Etel Adnan and Robert Wilson alongside pieces by Chryssa, Yiannis Moralis, Nikos Kessanlis, Yannis Tsarouchis, and Nikos Engonopoulos. The Onassis Collection is also being enriched by new commissions of digital works that spotlight emerging technologies and forms of expression and spark debates on major issues of our times, such as human rights, democracy, equality, and the climate crisis. The Onassis Foundation platform hosts digital works that test the very boundaries of contemporary art, by such artists as Theo Triantafyllidis and Loukia Alavanou, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Art of the “here and now” should be open and accessible to all.