1,2,3,4,5 and six

6th Athens Biennale – ANTI, 2018
Curated by Stefanie Hessler, Poka-Yio & Kostis Srafylakis

An all around the room, four-wall mural made on site for the Athens Biennale, shaping abstract codes that point towards the building of a paralinguistic discourse where aesthetics are re-thought and re-formed.
The expanded use of material and surfaces points to associations between context and matter – for instance the reminiscence of ‘primalism’ when drawing and painting on a wall, the harshness of acrylics which may feel like the sharpness of a child’s angry outburst, and the ever-loaded with dreams, fears and teen-age angst.

‘The 6th Athens Biennale flirts with the term, the attitude, the (im)possibility of ANTI. It asks: How does opposition play out today? And what kinds of identities does it forge? At present, an oppositional stance, an attitude of ANTI—an “antitude”—seems to encompass wide arenas of social life including cultural expressions, identity politics, art labor, media and scripted protagonist impersonations on Netflix as well as “weird advertising”, videogames and music video productions. In other words, attitudes of resistance, non-conformity and marginality are rapidly becoming canonized and commodified. ANTI is adored and detested as pre-eminent role model. The imagery of the cunning villain, the proactive manipulator, the taboo perpetrator, is one of today’s most fascinating characters in institutional and counter-establishment politics, tactical resistance and pop culture.’ Extract from the curatorial text.