For the exhibition Days of San, Lito Kattou presents the real time video projection Red Lake among with six new sculptures that are perceived as embodiments of the fictional character San. The works are creating pathways within the permanent collection of the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture in all levels, concluding on the third floor with the real time projection. San, an ungendered being between a human, a machine, a god and an animal, was conceived as an Artificial Intelligence. It reflects and negotiates the presence of creatures, guardians, and non human entities in mythological traditions, artifacts and histories spanning from the long past until today.
Opening: Friday 15 June, 20:00
Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, Koumpari 1, Athens
Deste Foundation in collaboration with the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture and Point Centre for Contemporary Art.
Days of San, follows the exhibition San by Lito Kattou presented at Point Centre for Contemporary Art in Lefkosia, Cyprus, 19th May -20th June 2018.
Venue:
Point Centre for Contemporary Art
2 Evagorou Avenue
Lefkosia 1097, Cyprus
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +357 22 662 053
Website: www.pointcentre.org
Skins and feathers from the creature’s epidermis are extruded from its body and co habit the space as sculptural forms coming together in dialogue with ancient traces and archeological depictions of subjectivities found throughout the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture.
In reverse, the exhibits of the permanent collection witness San’s constant trial of success and failure, its activity within a 3D simulated environment. The entity adapts and evolves through the algorithm that directs its everyday Sisyphean fate of patrolling the Red Lake, the remnant of an ancient copper mine close to Nicosia, Cyprus, active from the Chalcolithic period until the late 60’s. The mine’s landscape is highly affected by the climatic change and the ecological destruction which is developing dramatically in the South Eastern Mediterranean. The creature’s brain is designed to collect real time climatic data from the geographical spot of the Lake. San, as an AI being and through its sculptural manifestations, incarnates new forms of adaptive intelligence reacting to violent changes, materializing current ecological concerns and raising questions on the complexity of the nature-technology relationship.
Lito Kattou, born in Lefkosia, Cyprus 1990, lives and works in London and Athens. She is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts and the Royal College of Art in London with an MA in Sculpture.
Kattou is the recipient of the New Positions Award for Art Cologne 2018 and she was the invited artist for the 89plus Google Residency curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, 2017.
Selected recent shows include: “Siren Daylight”, ROOM E10 27, Berlin; “San”, Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia (solo); “District 17”, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Gallery, Berlin; “Night Fight”, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (solo); “And if I left of dreaming about you?”, Foothold, Bari; “It looks like up to me”, Eleni Koroneou, Athens; “*bang!”, Daily Lazy Projects, Athens; “Fighting with the Sun”, Clearview.ltd, London (solo); “Solar love for the Rapid Felines”, Pierre Poumet, Bordeaux (solo); “The Equilibrists”, New Museum, NY in collaboration with DESTE Foundation, Benaki Museum, Athens.
Her works are included in private collections, in the collection of the National Bank of Greece and the collection of Deutsche Telekom.
Special thanks to Hans Ulrich Obrist, Simon Castets and Julie Boukobza for supporting the realization of the work Red Lake at the 89plus Google Residency.
To Jonathan Tanant and Clifford Sage for the technical support during the production of the work Red Lake, to Nasos Ktorides, Lia Mori, Charalampos Ioannou and to Petros Moris for the invaluable help.
From Saturday, May 19, 2018
To Wednesday, June 20, 2018
