National Gallery
SOFIA ARSENAL – MUSEUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
AUSTRIAN EMBASSY
Foundation for contemporary art and media
and
FLUCA (Austrian Cultural Pavillion)
present
OLYMPIA
a solo exhibition and a major new commission by Vienna-based artist Aldo Giannotti
3 May – 10 June 2018
The exhibition “Olympia” borrows its name from the ancient side on Greece’s Peloponnese penincula that hosted the original Olympic Games in classical times. Aldo Giannotti forces the legacy of this ancient sport site into the institution itself, enableing through his drawings not only the possibility of a phisycal engagement but a “take on” thematics that are driven out of sports such as competition, national representations and power structures on a global scale. Through his work the instituion becomes a stadium of possiblities, engagements and sarcastic comments - a look at our society from the individual up to the collective, national, global and universal.
Aldo Giannotti has developed „Olympia” in the last couple of months and on site during his stay in Sofia. By using and re-contextualising materials and devices often found in sport arenas, such as podiums, running mates and sport items, it explores how human interactions with an institution for art can be staged and enacted differently, in ways that emphasise and disrupt the binaries of social behavior we are expected to demonstrate when entering a museum. Giannotti does this by making us all become active players in his Olympics, both in a physical and a conceptual manner.
* Aldo Giannotti - born in 1977 in Genova/Italy. Lives and works in Vienna/Austria since 2000. Founding member of the association Kforumvienna www.kforumvienna.com Member of dance and performance company Liquid Loft (visual concept). Studies 1995-2002 Accademia di Belle Arti/ Carrara Italy, Master class of Painting with Professor Omar Galliani; 1998 – Academy of Fine Arts Wimbledon, England Specialisation on video; 1999 – Akademie der bildenden Kunst, Munich Specialisation on Photography; 2002 – Diploma: Lebt und arbeitet in Wien, Culture Politics in Austria related to contemporary art. Aldo Giannotti had major presentations of his work in Albertina (Vienna), Kunsthaus (Graz), ar/ge kunst galerie (Bolzano), Museum of contemporary art (Zagreb) and many collective projects and public interventions. He is represented by Projektraum Viktor Bucher.
This exhibition is realized in partnership with FLUCA (a collaborative project of Open Arts Foundation and Austrian Embassy in Sofia) and Vienna Club-Bulgaria.
With the support of Federal Chancellery of Austria, Plovdiv 2019, Sofia Municipality and Plovdiv Municipality.