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Yorgo Manis. Metaphysical Safari Solo Show CO2 contemporary art Borgo Vittorio 9b . Roma September 19 - October 30, 2009 Catalogue texts by Miltos Manetas, Domenico Quaranta and Maria Letizia Bixio For his first solo show, London-based artist Yorgo Manis is presenting in Rome two different works, both related to his interest in the Internet as an empire of signs and as the home of a new sentimental order born through the global interconnection, which he likes to refer to as “cynical romanticism”. The title of the exhibition makes reference to a mental safari in which Rome meets a jungle landscape and the biggest online bookstore ever meets Amazon; and displays the artist's long time interest in safaris, that with their moral ambiguity are the perfect incarnation of this cynical romanticism. ROMA2 (2009) is a series of large paintings in which ghosts of popular site views of Rome are put into a jungle landscape of a Google Street View environment. Street View is a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth launched in May 2007, that provides for many streets in the world panoramic views from a row of positions along the street. The pictures are recorded by cars with nine directional cameras for the 360° views and GPS units for positioning. Thus, you can virtually visit a place, with its buildings, its cars and its pedestrians, without moving from your computer screen. For Manis, these site views are the trophies of this metaphysical safari, that the user tries to find and collect. 9 Books from Amazon (2009) is a layered, ironical installation that looks different according to the position of the spectator. From the front side seems like a minimal sculpture, from the left like a continuous painting and from the right like a conceptual work. To make it, 9 books were ordered from amazon.com, glued, painted with white spray and put in order on the wall. From the left side someone can see a painted scenery of Amazon, made by a collage of popular ‘google searched’ imagery about Amazon. From the right side, someone can witness - through a white spray transparency - the real identity of these objects. Accoording to art critic Domenico Quaranta, “what is so surprising in these works is the way they are painted. Manis makes passionate, lyrical paintings, refusing the impersonal coolness of most Pop Art. “I prefer to work allegorical and create fairy tales or ghosts out of it, avoiding a functional and immediate dependence”, he says in an interview. Only in this way imagination can get the upper hand on documentation, and the subject can settle a score with the monstrosity of a nine-eyed hydra.” Born in 1981 in Kavala, Greece, Yorgo Manis lives and works in London. There he attended, till 2008, the Goldsmith’s University. |
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