Bill Balaskas
Parthenon Rising
Past
2 October – 10 November 2012
11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki
Kalfayan Galleries are pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Bill Balaskas titled“Parthenon Rising”, at the Athens gallery space (11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki, Athens). Theopening is on Tuesday, 2 October 2012, from 20.00 to 22.00.The exhibition in Athens takes place after the artist’s recent talk at TATE Liverpool and thepresentation of his work at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and at the “World Event YoungArtists” show in Nottingham. The latter was organised in the context of the London 2012Cultural Olympiad, in which Balaskas was selected to represent the UK in the field of “VisualArt”.In his first Athens solo show (the artist also had a solo exhibition in Greece in 2011, at theFrench Institute of Thessaloniki, as part of the 3rd Biennale of Contemporary Art), Balaskascontinues his research into the subversion of images drawn from contemporary visualculture, through works that reflect, more or less directly, on the global economic crisis andthe nature of the capitalist system.The exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries revolves around the artist’s new in-situ installation titled“Architecture of Good and Evil”, which investigates the cultural origins of the currentsocio-economic crisis. The work features an inverted replica of an Ionic column and 172works on paper. The artist has chosen to intervene on pages from the seminal book of A. W.Lawrence “Greek Architecture” (1957), which depict architectural sketches of ancient Greekmonuments. By painting over a single part or shape of each sketch in blue, Balaskas raisesquestions regarding both the polysemy of symbols and the role played by their monosemoustheorization in the formation of a national or cultural identity.
Artists
Bill Balaskas
Bill Balaskas is a London-based artist, theorist, and educator. Originally trained as an economist in Greece, he later studied art in the United Kingdom. Informed by this interdisciplinary background, his practice interrogates socioeconomic and political systems through the lens of contemporary utopias and dystopias. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; BOZAR, Brussels; EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; CA2M, Madrid; Le CENTQUATRE, Paris; Transmediale, Berlin; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; TENT, Rotterdam; Whitstable Biennale; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; ARTIUM, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Almeida Garret Galeria Municipal do Porto; and the British Film Institute, London. His lecture-performances have been presented at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale; Tate Liverpool; the 11th Sharjah Biennial; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Warburg Haus, Hamburg; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. Balaskas’s writing has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Visual Culture, Third Text, OnCurating, Revista Arta, Times Higher Education, e-flux Architecture, and Espace Art Actuel. His edited books include ‘Fabricating Publics: The Dissemination of Culture in the Post-truth Era’ (Open Humanities Press, 2021) and ‘Institution as Praxis: New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research’ (Sternberg Press, 2020). Balaskas holds a PhD in Critical Writing in Art and Design and an MA in Communication Art and Design from the Royal College of Art. He is Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the School of Arts, Kingston University, where he founded the Centre for Practice Research in the Arts (CePRA) in 2022. Bill Balaskas is represented by Kalfayan Galleries, Athens – Thessaloniki.
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