Bill Balaskas “Parthenon Rising”

Kalfayan Galleries are pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Bill Balaskas titled "Parthenon Rising", at the Athens gallery space. The opening 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 the presentation of his work at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and at the "World Event Young Artists" show in Nottingham. The latter was organised in the context of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, in which Balaskas was selected to represent the UK in the field of "Visual Art".

In his first Athens solo show (the artist also had a solo exhibition in Greece in 2011, at the French Institute of Thessaloniki, as part of the 3rd Biennale of Contemporary Art), Balaskas continues his research into the subversion of images drawn from contemporary visual culture, through works that reflect, more or less directly, on the global economic crisis and the 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 current socio-economic crisis. The work features an inverted replica of an Ionic column and 172 works 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 Greek monuments. By painting over a single part or shape of each sketch in blue, Balaskas raises questions regarding both the polysemy of symbols and the role played by their monosemous theorization in the formation of a national or cultural identity.

Another view on this subject is presented by the video titled "Parthenon Rising", for which Balaskas was nominated for this year's ALICE Award (he received the "People's Voice Award"). The original footage, edited in the video, was filmed on the only day of the year that the Acropolis is open to the public at night and presents an aspect of the Greek monument that is less known to the wider public. Due to the constant, rapid change between light and darkness, the viewer is confronted with an image that shifts between beauty and violence, rendering Balaskas' work a multifaceted reference to the relationship between the viewer and spectacle.

Bill Balaskas (b. Thessaloniki, Greece, 1983) is a London-based artist working across different media. Balaskas is a research student in the MPhil/PhD programme (2011-2014) in Critical Writing in Art & Design at the Royal College of Art, London and holds an MA (2010) in Communication Art & Design from the same college. In 2008 he earned a BA (Hons) in Video Arts Production from the University for the Creative Arts, Maidstone (UK), and in 2004 a BSc in Economics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). Balaskas' work has been widely exhibited internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include presentations at the Institut Français de Thessalonique (3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art), Thessaloniki (2011); Jewish Museum, London; and Sketch Gallery, London (both 2010). Recent group exhibitions and screenings include presentations at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival; World Event Young Artists - London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, Nottingham (representing the UK); Maribor - European Capital of Culture 2012, Maribor (representing the UK); Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (all 2012); Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; Leeds International Film Festival, Leeds (both 2011); Musée des Abattoirs, Toulouse; British Film Institute, London; and A Foundation, Liverpool (all 2010). Furthermore, Balaskas is an awarded writer (British Council of Greece, 2005) and screenwriter (Houston International Film Festival, 2006), as well as guest editor of the most prominent academic journal in the field of New Media Art, the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (The MIT Press). In April 2012, the Global Board of Contemporary Art nominated him for the ALICE Award (People's Voice Award Winner). Bill Balaskas is represented by Kalfayan Galleries (Athens - Thessaloniki).

Don't miss the exhibition "Parthenon Rising" in Athens, Greece.