In her two-part project Substrate – a site-specific installation and an artist’s book – the Bremen-based artist Effrosyni Kontogeorgou addresses the process of transpiration and its poetic aspects and associative layers. Focusing on the processual character of transpiration and evaporation, Kontogeorgou deals with the connections between (exhibition) space, body and work.
The glass façade of the project space of the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst is steamed up and cloudy. The artistic intervention Hemmung (engl. Inhibition) transforms it into a damp, blind surface that communicates visually to the outside and at the same time blocks and dissects the view into the diffuse interior. Condensation settles on the glass panes, forming water droplets over time that gradually run down the pane in indeterminate paths. The exhibition space sweats. Wouldn’t such a humid climate be a danger to the collection of a museum or library?
The basement room is part of the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art and originally served as a reading room for the immediately adjacent library. A sub-skin, a substrate subordinate to a larger institution. Starting from this image, the conceptual work Substrate poses the question of how an art institution can be symbolically represented by means of its underlying work and the invisible physical presence of its staff. To this end, Kontogeorgou collects voluntary and anonymous samples of sweat and body odour from staff members throughout the institution, which are bound into a book whose form in turn refers abstractly to its floor plan. Thus, by capturing perspiration, its path across the boundary between space and body is traced and can be experienced associatively.
Unlike sweat, water has no smell. Yet moisture triggers odours and bacterial growth. What can be smelled here in the context of a scent exhibition? How does a “sweaty” exhibition space smell, how does a (closed) institution smell?
Effrosyni Kontogeorgou (born 1980 in Athens) studied Painting / Time-based media at the Athens School of fine Arts. She received her Master’s degree in Digital Media (M.A.) from HfK Bremen, where she was a master student of Jean-François Guiton in 2015. She lives and works in Bremen.
Project Space
Curated by Anne Storm
Edition
Effrosyni Kontogeorgou: Substrate (Pausen), 2021
Events
Sun 27.06.21, 11 a.m.
Artist Talk
Sun 11.07.21, 3 p.m.
Olfactory course with scent workshop
from GAK to Künstlerhaus Bremen
New: Fri 30.07.21, 7 p.m.
Artist Talk
More
→ Exhibitions trailer
Smell it! The Fragrance of Art
Support
Beate + Hartmut Schaefers Foundation
Special thanks to: Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst