«Lazy Suzan Not»
The event was at the Museum of Cycladic Art. Anastasia Douka with her installation «Lazy Suzan Not» won the deste prize for 2011.
The DESTE Prize was established in 1999 and is awarded every two years to a Greek artist living in Greece or abroad. The Prize aims to showcase the work of a new and emerging generation of artists and it is an integral part of the Foundation’s policy for supporting and promoting contemporary art in Greece.
The 32-years-old artist, received her award by Kasper König, director of the Ludwig Musem in Cologne, Germany.
Anastasia Douka’s work is a continuous research about human procedures, along with the very model of transmission of information and their products: architectural elements and geographical models, ancient cultures and contemporary popular icons, precious and everyday objects, human anatomy and machine anatomy, fantasies and theories with their proofs.
The six shortlisted artists for the DESTE Prize 2011 – Alexandra Bachzetsis, Anastasia Douka, Irini Miga, Eftihis Patsourakis, Theodoros Stamatogiannis and Jannis Varelas – will show their work in an exhibition that will take place for the second time at the Museum of Cycladic Art between May 25 and October 30, 2011. This collaboration between the DESTE Foundation and the Museum of Cycladic Art is part of the latter’s “Young Views” program, which aims at launching a dialogue with a younger generation, at keeping the public up to date with the latest developments in contemporary cultural production and at ensuring the dynamic presence of a space for the exchange of ideas.An international jury of six will select and announce the winner of this year’s DESTE Prize on September 14, 2011. The Prize is accompanied by a grant of €10.000.
The work of Jannis Varelas is defined by the pursuit of sets of historical references, with the purpose of recomposing and redifining them through new apperceptions. The artist is interested in the exploration of mechanisms that produce meaning within human perception, as well as the ways that meanings correlate, shift or collapse within human psychological state. In addition, he is also interested in the mechanism of self-definition resulting from every person’s own mythologies. This searching directs Varelas every time in the use of different materials and media, like drawing, collage, video, sculptures.
Anastasia Douka examines human procedures, along with whichever model of knowledge or retransmission of information, and their products: architectural elements and geographical models, ancient cultures and contemporary popular icons, precious and everyday objects, human anatomy and machine anatomy, fantasies and theories with their proofs. She constructs condensed objects out of joint that carry on different layers elements of the above. Hollow dies of familiar objects and symmetric wood fold-outs come together into a new unit. Every unit is after the hard-hidden gold in the bowels of the earth, the way adventurers do it. Anastasia Douka, FLIPPERS’ FAMILY I, 2008
Irini Miga,
A paradoxical
Epicenter Of
an Enchanting
Entity Can Also Be Encountered
If Only ou Just Stop L______, 2010
In her work, Irini Miga uses personal and historical references, always through an allegoric gaze at reality. One of her primary goals is to establish a dialogue between the past and the present. Miga is interested in discovering the poetry and romance, generated through the manipulation of old, distant events and cultural products, by giving birth to novel meanings and interpretations.
Alexandra Bachzetsis’ work constitutes an inquiry into genres of performing arts, techniques of choreography and forms of scenic behavior. Her main interest lies in codes that govern gestures, both in everyday life and on stage. Bachzetsis’ choreography scrutinizes the mutual influence between the use of gesture and movement in the ‘low’, ‘commercial’ genres – such as romantic comedy, TV soap, or hip-hop video-clip – and in ‘arts’, such as ballet, modern dance and performance. The artist tries to arrive at new ideas in dance performance inducing a productive crossing and translation between the hitherto isolated or even mutually exclusive cultural fields. In her performances, Bachzetsis takes on stereotyped modes of representation of female body in contemporary popular culture, show business and sex industry. She diverts clichés of commodified femininity and idolized masculinity to use them as building blocks in a new, consistent formal language that becomes tool of self-reflection and means to empowerment.
Alexandra Bachzetsis, A Piece Danced Alone
Photo: Melanie Hofmann
Pictured: Alexandra Bachzetsis & Anne Pajunen
 Eftihis Patsourakis, Fest, 2007 |
At the focal point of his multidimensional artistic practice, Eftihis Patsourakis delves into the individual and collective memory, into the relationship between identity and history and re-examines representation as a carrier of these matters, both through a net of actual social and cultural references and through particular reinterpretations regarding the history of art of modernism. Patsourakis uses in his work casual materials (for instance post-its, paper of burnt snipes, sheets from used photo albums), which mainly through their repetitive use become structural elements of the image. His work moves between the aesthetics of the sublime (erhaben), the mechanistic and abstract sensitivity of minimalism and a dimension of banal pop innovation. |
| Theodoros Stamatogiannis’ work is a research of how sculptural objects can arise from the geometry and the function of architectural place. It is an interpretation of sculpture as a means of redistribution of space, interweaving the boundaries between architecture and sculpture, interior and exterior and also private and public space. |
 Theodoros Stamatogiannis,Untitled, 2010 |
Even though it was so hot that autumn evening in Athens the Museum of Cycladic Art was full of art lovers … I was so happy to see Sofia Doxiades again! I really enjoyed working with her a few years back. She was responsible for the Deste Art Store and I was making artistic candles for them. It was so much fun!!! I miss my candle making business sometimes…It was so creative and rewarding!!!
Have a lovely Day!!!
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