© Panos Sklavenitis. All Rights Reserved.

Things of this world - Series of Actions and Installations

Things of this world (Rooms)

Mixed media installation, St George Lycabettus Hotel (Rooms 2012 contemporary art show), Athens, Greece, 2012.

Curated by Margarita Kataga.

"Things of this world" is the actual attempt to equate subject and object and to question, therefore, their actual meaning in the physical and the technological world. The idea of the project refers to recent anthropological disciplines which study the prepositional action of the objects around us and dispute man's sovereignty in the world. The material forms which emerge from nature's development, the study of their contradictions and the conflict amongst them, determine the relationship of man to the external world. The body itself is called to act as a cultural and sensory object. The artist is examining the identity and the history of matter through its plastic dimension. According to French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, material objects chosen by the artist are an integral part of the main idea of the concept. Autonomous forms therefore, are reflected on the actual material. The analogous relationship between idea and matter remains unbreakable. Things of this world also links the nature of objects to the moving image and the 'subjective' presence of the constructed persona – of man himself - within space. The co-existence of works of the artist with plain objects selected by him, with the human figure and the scientific discourse, projects a critical approach on the relations defined between object/subject utilitarian material/work of art and to the artistic gesture related to them. According to Plato – the ontological dimension of art, the element of mimisis, gives birth to the contradictory state between the external views of the thing and the actual thing. In the context of the current era Panos Sklavenitis, studies the apparent view of reality through its material dimension.

Things of this world (N.H.M)

Action, Goulandris Natural History Museum, Athens, 2011

"Things of this world" is a work of art in progress which consists of a series of performances and installations. Within this context in 2011, in the Goulandris Natural History Museum, Panos Sklavenitis placed worthless industrial objects among the museum exhibits. In this way he wanted to make a comment as far as the idea of natural history is concerned in general. He intervened in the idea of Natural History itself and in general in the concept of the Museum which in its turn converts an inanimate animal from its natural state of subject into a mere museum exhibit.

Extract from a text by Kyveli Lignou Tsamantani

Things of this world - Performance in a fruit packing factory, Athens, 2010

Participants: Nikolina Bairaktari, Nikos Gikas, Vasilis Karavias, Dionisis Lourandos, Vagelis Makropoulos, Veronika Marioglou

Things of this world - Performance in ASFA, Athens, 2009

Participants: Nikolina Bairaktari, Nikos Gikas

 

Panos Sklavenitis put naked people and readymades in defined frames, designed on the floor in a way which refers to pedestal or showcases in museum exhibitions. In a museum the pedestal as well as the environment itself or the institution redefine an object for example as readymade or an action as a performance. The subject and the object become equal through this procedure in "world of art" and this equation is based on the action that both can have. This idea also refers to contemporary anthropological consideration regarding the agency ("deliberate action") of things which in this way question the dominance of humans of this world. The objects are placed whithin a frame as a new type of portrait while the subject is transferred to the same level as the object through its placement next to objects without clothes thus causing a potential reading of humans as contemporary readymades. 

Extract from a text by Kyveli Lignou Tsamantani

Things of this world (Screen)

Mixed media installation and performance, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2009

< >