Venice Works

Just back from the Venice biennale, which was nothing new but lots of nice and some excellent. Here's a mix of faces and places and things that grabbed my very short attention:

The impossible to photograph but utterly fantabulous Canadian pavilion by David Altmejd, full of business men corpses with owl heads out of whose wounds fly smaller birds and golden chains and moss grows on their knees while other body parts turn into mirror crystals,and the men turn into werewolves and the installation seems to engulf the pavilion itself, turning everything into a magically gay forest nightmare disco funeral.

Also fabulous and out of control was the German pavilion by Iza Genzken, full of venetian samsonite cat poster dead ninja turtle silver spray paint and mirrors too.yes
couldnt resist a self portrait, because I waited 45 minutes to get in, so I really had to take a picture of everything
Genzken
and Genzken
and Genzken too all the while Angelo was sleeping with the winged lion of Venice that fell off it's pedestal, Sylvia danced around and Christodoulos studied carefully
comparing foldable wayfarers with Marina FokidisR.I.P. Jason Rhoadesboxes that fell on boxes in the curiously interesting Australian pavilion by Daniel von Sturmer, and a great great title: The Object of ThingsI cant remember the name of this artist at Arsenale, but he was born in 1920
and makes these apocalyptic invisible cities hanging rocks

walking around exhausted we passed by the best fence in Venice

the great "Hamster Wheel" where Gelitin caused havoc and terrified the police with their nakedness, and their "back in 5 minutes" video
and a rabbit with a flower on it's head checking out the chaosumm this
and Paola Pivi's lovely yellow feather polar bear
and Kostis Velonis going up some amazing stairs

the typical chandelier in our room in Dorsodurothe fantastic animation in the Russian pavilion

the fabulous Grotto on Garibaldi street
anarchy and ivy
sometimes hardware looks like art too

typical venetian skyline of tourists and boats and pink street lamps and antennae and palazzos and clouds
and of course the completely amazing Greek pavilion by Nikos Alexiou, a monastic hallucination on the floor of Iviron Monastery, overlaying paper cuts with projections with hanging plastic strings and models of tables on piles of papers and triangles and patterns
and amazing artists' studio installation where the table becomes the world
fragile paper labyrinths become the byzantine sky of complexity
that magically reappears in a hole on a building on the beach in Lido

New Italian Blood Special Guest

It sounds like a horror B-movie but it is not. New Italian Blood is a super nice architecture portal,

and I'm this weeks' special guest

at NIB you can post projects texts ideas etc.

Art Athina Shutdown

Today (I think) is the last day of Art Athina, the local fair that was succesfully (I guess) restarted this year. Here's some highlights:
Blow de la Barra's booth made super special by Angelo Plessas' MeLookingAtYou mural
and new painting by Miltos Manetas

the Athens poster (but I forget the name of the artist) at the booth of upcoming Rodeo Gallery run by the lovely Sylvia KouvaliAlso lovely Claudia Cargnel, enjoying her total Pierre Bismouth booth, Cosmic Gallery of course
in the parking garage, Nadia Argiropoulou curated the Sihroni Ellini Skini exhibition, an amazing show of the young greek art scene. There you could see:
AngelingAround.com by Angelo Plessas, who was always Angeling aroundThe thunder of Callas
the bizarre and wonderful drawing/sculpture/mural of Jannis Varelas
the Yeti Lines video by Yorgos Sapoudzis

and on another floor, great pieces by Kostis Velonis

The disappointment of Merope

Recently I let go of one of the plots of land on Aglaia, and took a remote hillside plot in the rural island of Merope. Or so I thought. The plot was a good deal, and the landlord Lottie Lamond seemed very nice. When I first put up Cloud House, on the hill that looked exactly like the original setting of the house, she warned me not to exceed 20 meters of height, in order to preserve the landscape, and I thought cool, maybe this island will be a bit more protected. Of course I return the next day and I have a neighbor, who has a built a tree house, but a HUGE tree house that is totally blocking my view. Thankfully he was there and we kind of agreed that he would scale down the treehouse. Then a few days later I arrive and all hell has broken loose.
Almost all the plots are taken, built up with pathetic reproductions of faux colonial houses that block entrance to visitiors (hate that) and genererally ugliness rules the land. In just a week Merope went from rural beauty to trailer trash, making the quiet suburbia of Aglaia seem like heaven. Still when I get a moment I'll try out a brief idea on Merope but I think later on, it is back to suburbia for me.

For Isabella

Ever since I heard about Isabella Blow's sad departure, I've been wondering if I should blog this, or if it would seem like I was cashing in or something. In any case, I'm not. I met Isabella in 2001 when I was living in New York and had just done a small Visionaire/ Dior Homme project for Hedi Slimane's Paris book. I guess it was a fashion moment or something, and at a party somebody introduced me to Isabella and we chatted and she started talking about the exhibition of her hats that she was preparing and she asked about my work and we exchanged contacts and party talk. Later on that week she called me up and asked "why don't you design my exhibition?". The show was going to be called "When Isabella met Phillip" and was her collection o Phillip Treacy hats or course. She was coming back to NY a month later so we agreed that I would show her a proposal. My idea was fairly simple: create a closed display box for the hats, a sort of containing a labyrinth of about 80cm high, clad with mirrors and lights on the inside, and display the hats in this interior mirrorspace. this box would be hanged from the ceiling at about eye level so people could enter it with their heads, walk around and look at the hats. From the outside it would look like the people visiting the show were all wearing a giant hat. Isabella was impressed, found it "very modern" and thought it fabulous. Promptly she sent it to Phillip Treacy and the Design Museums's then director Alice Rawsthorn, but from then on things went kind of wrong. Mr Treacy found the project too futuristic or something, and Mrs Rawsthorn sent me an email which for some reason I received a year later(it arrived on a old laptop that my assistant checked mail on, boring story). The project was never realized, Isabella was always enthusiastic and was generous introducing me to people as she always did with everybody, always promoting fresh ideas, and always on the lookout for new. I never included this small project on the website because I always thought that one day she would get a chance for another show and we could use it. I guess it too late, and when I look at the quick sketches I did for the project it looks less like an audience wearing a giant hat and more like a funeral procession...

If you're in xxxxxxxxx tonight

... Barcelona tonight: Check out the projection of Hotel Blue Wave at the Col·legi d’Aparellador s i Arquitectes Tècnics, presented as part of the LOOP festival.









...Thessaloniki tonight. The exhibition "Beholders of other places" curated by Maria Tsantsanoglou, part oft he larger Heterotopias theme of the Thessaloniki Biennial opens tonight, at Moni Lazariston. I'm showing models and videos from "First Land, Second Life".

Northern Lights

Was just up in Thessaloniki to install for the biennial, and here's some highlights (more on the biennial soon)on the way up the clouds were strangely phallic
we drove by an abandoned UFO,and arrived to see the magnifcent OTE tower by Takis Zenetos Dimitriadis

one of the coolest buildings in Greece, with a rotating cafeand very nicely facetted concrete underbellyamazing exterior staircase
and fantastic views of the city. Each rotation takes about 1h30 so with a long drink you see the whole town (from a safe distance).Next to the Zenetos building another weird Mirror SpaceFrame type of thing, that I have no idea who designed. Any thoughts?

detail shot

and another interesting and slightly sci-fi facade from downtown
inside the State Museum, a very nice chair, part of the Alexander Iolas collection
the very 60's officer's club. Then on the way back, a stop at the Tembi riverand a cute 50's church

Some Swiss Styles

The "I'm a weird faux-metobolistic thing you never expected to see on this street"
and I look good from the side too
The "I'm a Bank but I want to be cool too"

The "I'm just a cheap hotel with flags and I'm pretenting to be international"
The "I could be in Dubai too"
and the "I'm not an interesting building but I have cool shop windows on the ground floor".