A multimedia installation titled "Red Eyed Sky Walkers" by artist Jenny Marketou is running at the temporary premises of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in downtown Athens, partly outdoors in the building's Peristyle, and partly in the indoor Project Room.The installation opens the year's exhibitions at the Museum, inaugurating the series "EMST Commissions 2010", a program of new productions commissioned by the Museum that will be presented in the Project Room, in the framework of the EMST's open and investigative exhibition policy in the ecumenical spirit of the times.
The aim is to give the opportunity to Greek and international artists who create in different genres and media -painting, sculpture, installation, video, photography, new media, performance- to experiment and create works that will be presented in this particular space, revealing contemporary artistic and transcultural quests. Six new productions are scheduled every year, with the perspective to be included afterwards in the museum's permanent collection.
The National Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 2000 and its foundation came to cover a huge gap that the decades-long absence of an analogous institution for contemporary international art had created in Athens, according to Museum director Anna Kafetsi.
"Our decision to start immediately with exhibitions and namely of mostly critical and experimental character, even without premises or collections, was dictated by exactly this need. Exhibitions of contemporary art were taking and still take place in Athens. But the responsibility of the Museum, which equally sets in the centre of its activities both works of art and the public, is not to act circumstantially but based on a organized plan that is being realized from exhibition to exhibition and aims at awakening sensitivities and formulate critical thought and aesthetic criteria: there are no museums without audiences," says Kafetsi.
"Still, there are no museums without collections. With the ambition that until 2011, when the reconstruction of the former Fix brewery which will be the permanent premises of EMST will have been completed, a remarkable nucleus of works of art by Greek and international artists will have been developed, we compose collections of selective rather than encyclopaedic character, which promote advanced tendencies and critical explorations of the artistic present but also its historical depths which reach as far as the second half of the 20th century," she adds.
"Our goal, through both exhibitions and collections, is to offer all the visitors of the Museum, which remains an unreservedly democratic institution, the 'other' dimension which in our time cannot be conceived outside transcultural and ecumenical patterns," according to Kafetsi.
The exhibition will run through March 8 at the Museum's temporary premises at the Athens Conservatory at the corner of Vassileos Georgiou B and Rigillis streets in central Athens.
The EMST will enter in its new phase of operation with the accommodation of all the activities and its collections in its new premises, the old Fix brewery building on Syggrou Avenue, the reconstruction of which is being funded under the 3rd Community Support Framework CSF).
02.02.2010
