Maria Marshall - Antonio Riello - Aphrodite Litti

Art Athina 2008

23.05.08 - 25.05.08

Potnia Thiron at Art-Athina

For the second year running, the Potnia Thiron contemporary art gallery will have its own stand at Art-Athina with works by Maria Marshall, Antonio Riello and Aphrodite Litti. Three artists with distinct personal styles who use their imagination, a keen eye for reality and—above all—their masterful technique to induct us into a parallel world thick with meaning and grace.
The celebrated British film artist Maria Marshall will be present with her new work 28 weeks later, an exceptional video encapsulating the features that made her name on the international art scene: her devastatingly critical approach to issues including the mental world of children, innocence, and the challenges of growing up and behaving maturely in ‘adult’ environments.
Maria Marshall’s new work for Potnia Thiron also includes two zombie movie posters, the first taken from her new work 28 weeks later, the second--entitled 28 days later--from SOFIKON-EPIDAURUS, which she made in Greece for Greece last summer. The latter ended up intertwined with one of the greatest ecological and national tragedies in modern Greek history, as the site chosen for shooting the film, a historic chapel in Sofikon just a mile or two from the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, was the scene of unbelievable destruction wrought by the great forest fires of 2007. The work was shown at the Contemporary Istanbul art fair in 2007.
Antonio Riello, the Italian artist known for an allusive, if not downright playful, approach to his subjects, which generally engage with common behaviours, perceptions and interpretations tests the limits once again of the mechanisms determining what is acceptable and what is not. Using real weaponry, he creates a personal universe of automatic rifles, revolvers, hand-grenades and bullets decorated with precious stones and luxurious fabrics. At Art-Athina, he will be showing KARINA, a German Luger PO8 pistol, and STRELA, a Russian sniper rifle, both reworked in Riello’s inimitable fashion.
The Potnia Thiron stand will also feature work by Aphrodite Litti: GIRL, a sculpture of a dream-like girl in brass with Murano tesserae, and one of her Pop fantasy butterflies. Both works are from her recent show at Potnia Thiron, “A.Litti in wonderland”, whose catalogue was prefaced by the author and professor of Criminology Eugenios Trivizas.
Visitors will be able to form a more holistic view of Antonio Riello’s work in the space designed for Art-Athina’s open plan by the exhibition’s curator, Bettina Maria Busse. The works on show there will include his impressive BOMBING, an installation consisting of a table and 12-piece dinner service decorated with depictions of weapons; his RENAISSANCE AIRPLANE BOMB, a ceramic bomb made out of genuine hand-painted Faenza pottery; and his CERAMIC CREST 2, a second wall-mounted hand-painted ceramic installation consisting of 16 plates and 2 weapons in genuine Faenza. As Giannis Panousis, Professor of Criminology, aptly notes in his introductory text to the catalogue accompanying the artist’s show at Potnia Thiron last November, the artist’s choices seek to familiarize us “...with the artistic, rather than the technical, side of weapons. To draw our attention to their artistry, their colours and combos, their trim, adornments and nomenclature”.