Mount the Air

Kalfayan Galleries present the solo show of APT artist  Kostis Velonis titled “Mount the Air”.  The opening of the exhibition will take place on Thursday, 26 November.

The sculptures and performative environments of Kostis Velonis refer to the ways in which the adverse conditions of the economy influence interpersonal relationships. If uncertain working conditions negate the stability of the home environment and accelerate the ephemeral co-existence with objects, how does sculpture describe these relationships?

Velonis uses cheap furniture that one finds in precarious workers’ apartments. At the same time he makes DIY structures in which he communicates the sense of urgency. The “activist architecture” in the show “Mount the Air”, investigates the permanence of social structures as well as questioning their role and form. The design of objects that function outside the context of privacy refers directly to the provisional and impromptu constructions that are used in demonstrations, public speeches and protests.

 A question that is expressed through all the works relates to the possibility of a political theory that targets an expanded environmental legislative body of «species». Velonis combines the fundamental technique of the design of the object using remnants of construction materials in a vocabulary in which sculpture is denied its monumentality. The size of the cat as a form and as narrative draws forth arguments that refer to the priority of privacy in the urban center in juxtaposition and dialogue with the public space. The cat as a house pet incorporates domesticity in the modernist condition. On the other hand, sculptural constructions whose forms refer to the presence of birds in the Attic sky mirror dynamically the public sphere.