Antonio Riello

ReMap 2

16.06.09 - 04.10.09

Potnia Thiron will be taking part in the international contemporary art programme ReMap 2, June - October 2009 with Antonio Riello. Following on from his “Politically incorrect” show at the POTNIA THIRON – BANK OF ATTENTION in winter 2007, Antonio Riello is returning to Greece with a large-scale video installation (3 x 6 metres) exclusively created for ReMap 2.

ELEGANTANK 5, which the artist describes as a “diverting nightmare”: is a site specific installation especially made for ReMap 2 and is a powerful example of Antonio Riello’s ironic approach to the core issues of our time.

The art project is composed by some different parts. A local old building (a former shop) rearranged in a “special” way, a video inside the building specially made for the project (visible from outside) and a sound that erupting from the building spreads around the streets whereabouts.

The result is a multilevel installation in some way related to the well known area of Exarcheia in Athens where on December 2008 happened the tragic riots that troubled Athens and the World. A sort of geographical dislocation by art.

Antonio Riello’s artwork mixes here artistically violence and fighting with elegance, the graffiti protest with the fashion brands, the uncomfortable real noise of a moving tank with catwalk music. Nothing is exactly as it is supposed to be: instead everything is ambiguously and temporary transformed in something else.

Although Antonio Riello uses sculpture, painting and photography as well as digital media: discretely but acerbically ironic, he undermines anything and everything that seeks to present itself as proper or beyond reproach. His main target is contemporary Italian society and the dark side of its obsession with the chic and the tasteful.

Antonio Riello born in Venice, lives and works in Italy. Digital media are a core field of application in his art and the focus of his teaching. He lectures in Videogame Phenomenology at a number of universities. In 1997, he created ITALIANI BRAVA GENTE Europe’s first art-work in video-game form and a caustic comment on Italian xenophobia.

Opening: Tuesday June 16, 2009, 11.00 – 21.30
Dates: June 16 –October 04, 2009
Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 17.30 – 21.30    
Address: 23 Thermopilon & 68 KerameikouSt, Metaxourgeio