Yorgos Sapountzis
Scenography as a place of longing
29. 7. – 17. 8. 19
This course, in close collaboration with a second course at the International Summer Academy of Music at the Mozarteum University, will produce a music performance, to be shown on 16 August 2019.
Yorgos Sapountzis's course, which focuses on stage design and performance, is directed at creative artists, performers, designers, video artists, light artists, sound artists, poets, dancers and/or actors who would like to try their hand at the visual arts. The second course, directed by composer Øyvind Torvund, is devoted to the musical production with singing and instrumental music. The central point is the stage – a place for possibilities and experiments, a place for wishes, a place of longing –, which becomes real through scenic design. Sapountzis, known for his performative installations, is fascinated by the self-abandonment of an actor or a performer in the moment when he/she enters on to the stage before an audience, and embodies a role. This is the essence: the ability to feel through and with others. Starting from this, the production, design and material will be constructed in order to convey the story and the experience entailed in it.
The course offers the opportunity to find – irrespective of any limitations of genre – a personal performative and installative language, leading in group discussions (also with singers and musicians from the Mozarteum Summer Academy) to a joint performance.
Information
- Venue
- Festung Hohensalzburg
- Date
- 29. 7. – 17. 8. 19
- What to bring
- Preferred art materials
- Teaching language
- English (teacher also speaks German and Greek)
- Co-teacher
- Marilena Katranidou
Yorgos Sapountzis
Yorgos Sapountzis, born in Athens in 1976, lives and works in Berlin. His multi-media work engages both public and private spaces, often taking as a starting point public monuments and everyday images, objects that represent some aspect of collective and personal memory. At the core of most of his works are sculptural installations using such materials as aluminium sheets and rods, brightly-coloured fabric, pins, ribbons and adhesive tape. From the daily encounter with the materials and objects he comes across in his routes, he reconstructs within the works the scenography of a city. Buildings, machines, bodies – they all generate power and heat; only the fluidity of the memories rescues his personal narrative. The closed nervous system of the city with the countless high resolution images is dominant and insistent. Within this inhospitable condition, the abstract precedes as an imperative need.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
2018 Yorgos Sapountzis MICHSICH HOTEL, Kunst Meran, Merano (IT). 2017 Nacktes Erbe: Die Äpfel, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich (DE). 2016 Yorgos Sapountzis: ATM (…songs about love and death), Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens. 2015 Übersetztes Handbuch “weich und hart” – Duo- Exhibition with Benedikt Rugar, Prince of Wales, Munich. 2014 Die Landschaften Griechenlands, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich. Athens Screens, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens. 2013 Freymond-Guth fine Arts, Zurich (CH). The Protagonists, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (UK). Urnerknabe am Schaufenster/ Empathie, Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus (CH). Schinken und Käse, Kunsthalle Lingen, Lingen (DE). 2012 Stechfliegen Festtage/The Gadfly Festival, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (DE).
Group exhibitions
2017 It Looks Like Up To Me, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens. ANTIDORON. Die Sammlung des EMST im Museum Fridericianum, documenta 14, Kassel (DE). Viva Arte Viva, 57th Biennale die Venezia, Venice (IT). PRODUKTION. made in germany drei, Kestner Gesellschaft, Kunstverein, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (DE). 2016 Idiopolis, State of Concept, Athens. The Kids Want Communism | Part 3, MoBY, Tel Aviv (IL). 2015 esse estranho, ubíquo e implacável sítio a que chamamos memória, Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon. wow! Woven? Entering the (sub)Textiles, Künstlerhaus Graz (AT). All Tomorrow’s Past, Kunsthaus Hamburg (DE). 2014 Glass Puzzle, Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY (US). Inundumundumherum, Kunstverein Arnsberg, Arnsberg (DE). Common Spaces, The Kitchen, New York, NY. Future Perfect. Contemporary Art From Germany, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.
