Manolis Baboussis
25 Jan - 24 Feb 2007
MANOLIS BABOUSSIS
Manolis Baboussis’ photographic work goes back to the 70s and has its origins in audiovisual performances carried out in the premises of various institutions and asylums. Originally, his work would take the form of slides, projected on the wall and accompanied by the sound of the respective performances. As such it heralded the artist’s work in later years: the photographic tableau that seemed to provide him with an incentive for considering space and architecture as two realities that are decidedly irreconcilable with the human condition. In his current exhibition, Baboussis presents large scale photographic works (172 x 172 cm) and a two-screen video projection featuring color photographs and sound, titled “crisis”.
These various spaces of crisis – a state from which no institution seems to be exempt, including that supreme political institution that is the Parliament – are the subject of an original investigation with which the artist has long been preoccupied; one involving a search for the aesthetic and symbolic aspects of space and of man’s place in it. It is an element that seems to be present throughout Baboussis’ work, from its very beginnings to these most recent works, in which the artist articulates a new sociopolitical dimension of his problematic regarding his particular relationship to photography by means of the absence or presence of the human figure in the pattern by which space is arranged. At the same time, he juxtaposes his photographic tableaux, causing them to intersect and enter into a dialectic relationship with one another, which has little to do with a sense of affinity between the works in terms of their theme or date of creation. What he in fact accomplishes in this way is to generate a short-circuit-like effect in terms of the various associations generated and to thus help create new meaning.
Baboussis traces the way in which homogeneity accumulates and is being arranged and transforms his own relationship to space into images of contemplation and reflection. He imparts to the entities depicted the quality of a conscious and informed experience, in spite of general opinion that might deem this commonplace or void of any real interest; in fact, he does so to such an extent that, occasionally, what would otherwise remain hidden and pending in some dark corner of possibility, in an unfulfilled state of anticipation – in the absence that is of the photographic act – is now made real by means of the artist’s imagination. Photography thus highlights the concept, the process of thought rather than any seemingly objective reality.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by futura publications. Its title is Possessions from the artist’s recent exhibition at the Centro Arte Moderna e Contemporanea della Spezia and it features six sections bearing respective titles: fields, performances, attitudes, management, secrets, anticipation, crisis. Texts have been contributed by Bruno Corà, Denis Zacharopoulos and Manolis Baboussis himself.
© Manolis Baboussis
Untitled, 2006
Manolis Baboussis’ photographic work goes back to the 70s and has its origins in audiovisual performances carried out in the premises of various institutions and asylums. Originally, his work would take the form of slides, projected on the wall and accompanied by the sound of the respective performances. As such it heralded the artist’s work in later years: the photographic tableau that seemed to provide him with an incentive for considering space and architecture as two realities that are decidedly irreconcilable with the human condition. In his current exhibition, Baboussis presents large scale photographic works (172 x 172 cm) and a two-screen video projection featuring color photographs and sound, titled “crisis”.
These various spaces of crisis – a state from which no institution seems to be exempt, including that supreme political institution that is the Parliament – are the subject of an original investigation with which the artist has long been preoccupied; one involving a search for the aesthetic and symbolic aspects of space and of man’s place in it. It is an element that seems to be present throughout Baboussis’ work, from its very beginnings to these most recent works, in which the artist articulates a new sociopolitical dimension of his problematic regarding his particular relationship to photography by means of the absence or presence of the human figure in the pattern by which space is arranged. At the same time, he juxtaposes his photographic tableaux, causing them to intersect and enter into a dialectic relationship with one another, which has little to do with a sense of affinity between the works in terms of their theme or date of creation. What he in fact accomplishes in this way is to generate a short-circuit-like effect in terms of the various associations generated and to thus help create new meaning.
Baboussis traces the way in which homogeneity accumulates and is being arranged and transforms his own relationship to space into images of contemplation and reflection. He imparts to the entities depicted the quality of a conscious and informed experience, in spite of general opinion that might deem this commonplace or void of any real interest; in fact, he does so to such an extent that, occasionally, what would otherwise remain hidden and pending in some dark corner of possibility, in an unfulfilled state of anticipation – in the absence that is of the photographic act – is now made real by means of the artist’s imagination. Photography thus highlights the concept, the process of thought rather than any seemingly objective reality.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by futura publications. Its title is Possessions from the artist’s recent exhibition at the Centro Arte Moderna e Contemporanea della Spezia and it features six sections bearing respective titles: fields, performances, attitudes, management, secrets, anticipation, crisis. Texts have been contributed by Bruno Corà, Denis Zacharopoulos and Manolis Baboussis himself.
© Manolis Baboussis
Untitled, 2006