THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING AFTER, MARIO GARCIA TORRE'S COCKTAIL NIGHT AT BISTROTHEQUE

Vladimir offering some Sprouzos!


MGT's Sabor a Mi (Taste of Me)


The CWE, Aleksandra Mir's Rejection, and Sarah McCrory's Cheeky Vimto


serving some Jonathan Monk's Bloody Gin and Tonic Mary


dj of the night Craig Garett together with chief cocktailier Mr Waddington


MGT and PLB waiting for the customers


Mario Garcia Torres


Mme Horan, creator of the Nailgroni


Mr. Giles Round creator of the Crystal Meth


Kit Hammonds about to have his Publish and be Slammed shot


Manuela Ribadeneira with her Cruz del Sur drink


Ali MacGilp and Carmen Julia having a Klein Blue


Mrs Gwendoline Christie and Mr David Waddington


Mme Esther Planas, celebrating her birthday with Aztec zombie friends


Pijnappel, Angelidakis, Mirko de Lisi


Jose Garcia Torres, Patrick Charpenel


Mr. Gabriel Lester and friends

Pablo Accinelli having a Jonathan Monk's Bloody Gin and Tonic Mary

The Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution and Bistrotheque presents:
THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING AFTER
a small show, or gathering, or event-exhibition, or bar night, or cocktail menu
by Mario Garcia Torres

*****

COCKTAIL MENU

CWE
by Cerith Wyn Evans
Equal parts of Evian and Bdoit, slice of cucumber

The Rejection
by Aleksandra Mir
Ice cold sparkling water, wedge of lime, no ice cubes

Counter-Insurgency
by Claire Bishop
A conservative glass of chilled Rosé

Sprouzo
by Pauline Daly and Rebecca Warren
Sprite, Ouzo

Cheeky Vimto
by Sarah McCrory
1 bottle WKD Blue, shot of Port, ice

Gloria
for Rosalind Nashashibi
Tequila, Prosecco and Triple sec

The Bloody Gin and Tonic Mary
by Jonathan Monk
Gin, Vodka, tonic water, tomato juice, equal amounts of each with lemon juice, lime juice and ice

Crystal Meth
by Giles Round
Champagne, Vodka, pomegranate juice and cassis

Nailgroni
by Phillipa Horan
A traditional Negroni with an ice cube in it which has a small piece of nail in it
You have to drink the Nailgroni quickly before the ice melts so you don't swallow a piece of my nail

Publish and be Slammed
by Kit Hammonds
salt rimmed Tequila shot with a lime Vodka jelly at the bottom of the glass
In the jelly would be floating some letters cut from Frieze magazine

La Cruz del Sur
by Manuela Ribadeneira
Cachaca, five ice cubes (one for each star)
Look south literally or metaphorically while drinking

Dry Laurette
by Matthieu Laurette
Gin, dry vermouth, olive (no lemon twist nor vodka!)

Sabor a Mi
by MGT
Prosecco, Cynar, Gin, St. Germain, sugar water, orange peel

The Klein International Blue
by Yves Klein
Gin Bombay Sapphire, Curaçao Amerlalis, Cointreau, lemon juice

*****

THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING AFTER
a small show, or gathering, or event-exhibition, or bar night, or cocktail menu
by Mario Garcia Torres

Alcohol (as well as drugs) consumption have been historically, and most probable mistakenly, connected to the creative act. Yet there has been a number of visual artists that have resorted to the old idea of drinking and getting drunk to create their work, both as a medium and as its “content”. The English duo Gilbert & George in Balls: The Evening Before the Morning After - Drinking Sculpture (1972) took blurred pictures of themselves while getting drunk, it is from this work that this night and cocktail menu take its title from. In another of their iconic works Gordon’s Gin Makes Us Drunk (1972), the couple is seen on a video piece indulging in the mentioned spirit. Similarly, the entire Andy Warhol film Drink (1965) is a long take of the filmmaker Emile de Antonio downing a bottle of whiskey. The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends -I wouldn't limit it to only such beverage- is the Highest Form of Art (1970), declared Tom Morioni as he inaugurated what now is called a social situation type of artwork.

By chance, and several years before, the experience of art through a cocktail was extended after the fact, some would say into the morning after. Those who attended the opening of the French artist Yves Klein at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris on April 29, 1959 could acknowledge it. For this exhibition the space had been painted with white enamel and stripped of all objects and furniture except for a white, empty cabinet. The almost bare gallery could not be seen from outside as the windows had been painted blue and the door was covered with a heavy curtain of the same colour, with two Republican Guards keeping watch over it. Nevertheless the artist had arranged for a specific cocktail made with Gin, Cointreau and Curacao to be served. To the French artist delight -who had been painting deep blue monochrome paintings made out of a self invented recipe for such pigment- all who enjoyed the drink eventually found their pee stained blue.

Thinking about this and proposing, again, to use the idea of the cocktail as a medium, or more so to use the mixology that such a drink require to provoke a specific aesthetic experience, or... maybe just as a decoy to have a good conversation, I have invited a number of artists friends to present their own cocktail, either one that they like, have customised or that have put together themselves. As an honorary place, the menu will close with the historic blue cocktail.

THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING AFTER takes place once a month at Celeste House in Mexico City, for this occasion Bistrotheque and the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution have invited MGT and artists and curators in London to participate in a London version of this evening.

MARIO GARCIA TORRES 'THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING AFTER' COCKTAIL NIGHT AT CELESTE BAR, MEXICO CITY

From: Mario Garcia Torres
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:18:41 -0500
Subject: The Evening Before the Morning After

Yo! I am organizing a small show, or gathering, or event-exhibition, or cocktail menu at Celeste Champagne Bar in Mexico City. I proposed to present each month an artist cocktail in the bar, and I would love,- be honored-, if you accept this invitation. I am asking you to send me the recipe or name or whatever of a cocktail that you like, or that you have mixed or customized yourself to be included in this menu, and which would either have your name or a title that you wish to put to it. How does this sound? It would be amazing if you accept to participate. Here is below an intro text that I wrote for it, and that will be printed in our menu. I look very much forward to hear from you.

All my best,
MGT

PS: In case you feel lost on this cocktail world as I was not too long ago, I invite you to enter into it through the Mixilator: http://www.cocktaildb.com/mixilator

*****

The Evening Before the Morning After
Thursday August 25, 2011
Celeste Champagne Bar

Alcohol (as well as drugs) consumption has been historically, and most probable mistakenly, connected to a creative act. Yet there has been a number of visual artists that have resort the old idea of drinking and getting drunk to create their work, both as a medium and as its “content” as the English duo Gilbert & George argued with their Drinking Sculptures series where they took pictures of themselves in that very same act. In one of their most iconic works, besides the one which this menu take its title from, is Gordon’s Gin Makes Us Drunk (1972), the couple is seen on a video piece indulging in the mentioned spirit. Similarly, the entire Andy Warhol film Drink (1965) is a long take of the filmmaker Emile de Antonio downing a bottle of whiskey. The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends -I wouldn’t limit it as only such beverage- is the Highest Form of Art (1970), declared Tom Morioni as he inaugurated what now is called a social situation type of artwork.

By chance, and several years before this, the experience of art through a cocktail was extended after the fact, some would say into the morning after. Those who attended the opening of the French artist Yves Klein at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris on April 29, 1959 could acknowledge it. For this exhibition the space had been painted with white enamel and stripped of all objects and furniture except for a white, empty cabinet. The almost bare gallery could not be seen from outside as the windows had been painted blue and the door was covered with a heavy curtain of the same color, and two Republican Guards kept watch over it. Nevertheless the artist had arranged for a specific cocktail made with Gin, Cointreau and Curacao to be served. To the French artist’s delight -who had been painting deep blue monochrome paintings made out of a self invented recipe for such pigment- all who enjoyed the drink eventually found their pee stained blue.

Thinking about this and proposing, again, to use the idea of the cocktail as a medium, or more so to use the mixology that such a drink requires to provoke a specific aesthetic experience, or… maybe just as a decoy to have a good conversation, I have invited a number of artists friends to present their own cocktail, either one that they like, have customized or that have put together themselves. Each month a new cocktails by artists will be presented until a full bar menu is completed. As an honorary place, the menu will open with the historic blue cocktail.

Mario García Torres

*****

The Klein International Blue by YVES KLEIN
Gin Bombay Sapphire, Curaçao Amerlalis, Cointreau, lemon juice $95.00

Caesar by RODNEY GRAHAM
Clamato, vodka Three Olives, green bean pickle $90.00

The Luis Barragán by PABLO LEÓN DE LA BARRA
Tequila Herradura Blanco blessed by a priest $75.00

Happy Stan by STAN DOUGLAS
Vodka Chopin, tequila Corralejo, lemon juice $135.00

El López by EDUARDO LÓPEZ
Ron Bacardi Blanco, lemon juice, mineral water, ginger syrup, cucumber, mint $70.00

Wendt Up by KONRAD WENDT
Blueberry tea, Black tea, Amaretto Disaronno, Grand Marnier $150.00

Jonathan Johnson by CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLF
Lemon Soda, Rioja La Vendimia Rioja Red Wine, vodka Three Olives $220.00

Luis G. Urbina by ZELIKA GARCÍA
Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial Champagne, vodka Belvedere $360.00

Araki by ARAKI NOBUYOSHI $25.00

MARIO GARCIA TORRES 'JE NE SAIS SI C'EN EST LA CAUSE' AT EL ECO EXPERIMENTAL MUSEUM

installation views of 'Je ne sais si c´en est la cause' at Museo El Eco




beach chairs designed by Mario Garcia Torres with The Grapetree Hotel logo




Mario Lopez Landa playing at El Eco as part of 'Je ne sais si c´en est la cause'
buy Mario Lopez Lada's CD here: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mariohappyfi




'JE NE SAIS SI C'EN EST LA CAUSE'
Mario García Torres
El Eco, Museo Experimental
from June 9, 2011

Described as a story of “deceptions and disappointments,” Mario García Torres' audio-visual installation in the Main Gallery describes the context in which The Grapetree Hotel was built in the 60s, on the island of St. Croix. It was at this hotel that the young French artist Daniel Buren produced a group of murals. Buren struggled to make these works and expressed his distaste for them, but later acknowledged their importance as his first in-situ works, a characteristic of his highly influential Conceptual Art practice. García Torres' project explores the inherent fictions, politics and creativity of history. Originally presented in 2009, the artist has adapted the work to the characteristics of Mathias Goeritz´s architecture. He has specifically chosen not to darken the space completely, but to incorporate the changing light effects experienced throughout the day in the building. His slide images will appear pale and bleached by the summer sun at various times, while as the sun sets they will become more defined.

Mario Garcia Torres was born in 1975 in Monclova, Mexico and currently lives in Mexico City. His solo shows include the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2010); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2009); UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (2009); Kunsthalle Zürich (2008) and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2007). He has participated in multiple bienales including: the 29th Bienal de São Paulo (2010); Taipei Biennial (2010); 52nd Biennale di Venezia (2007); 8th Panama Biennial (2008); and in group exhibitions at museums and institutions worldwide. He was the recipient of the Cartier Award at the Frieze Art Fair (2007).

As part of the exhibition, Mario García Torres presents: Mario López Landa who composed the song for JE NE SAIS SI C´EN EST LA CAUSE.
a concert by Mario López Landa, together with Goma and the musicians of Quiero Club
Thursday, June 30 2011, 20:00 PM

Mario García Torres (in colaboration with Mario López Landa)
'No sé si esa sea la causa / Je ne sais si c’en est la cause' exhibited at Museo El Eco, is a work which forms part of the exhibition 'INCIDENTS OF MIRROR TRAVEL IN YUCATAN AND ELSEWHERE' curated by Pablo Leon de la Barra at Museo Tamayo.

http://www.eleco.unam.mx

installation photos by Ramiro Chavez http://chavesphoto.com/

buy Mario Lopez Lada's CD here: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mariohappyfi

*****

Je ne sais si c´en est la cause, 2009
Mario García Torres (in colaboration with Mario López Landa)
Audio and music lyrics:

On Southeastern coast of St. Croix, is what once was called the Grapetree Bay Hotel.

Exposed to the Caribbean sun, have the remains been, in constant decay, for the last couple of decades.

One could probably say that story of the Grapetree Bay is surrounded by deceptions and disappointments. And maybe that is what makes it fascinating.

The hotel opened in the early sixties, and ran only for a little bit more than a couple of decades. Most people would think without much luck.

Even before it opened its doors in the early sixties, the enterprise was already the motive of legal and economic disputes.

But for most guests, the hotel seemed like a lively place. A fantastic spot, set on white sands. A paradise, only a few hours away, they would say.

Misfortune came again when in 1989 a hurricane hit the island, damaging the premises and leaving them abandoned thereafter.

Today old guests can be seen once in a while walking through the debris, probably in search for lost memories.

They walk through hollow structures, habited by nature. There is the empty pool by the clubhouse, but the tennis courts have almost disappeared.

Still there though, half destroyed, are the mosaic and ceramic murals that decorated the place. Not many people put attention to them then, hardly any these days.

Since its inception it seems they where also the product of a hard time; a foundational time.

Fate has dramatically changed their context, but surprisingly they seem to play the same unimposing role, almost unaware of their importance.

Je suis toujours aussi mal installé.
Je ne sais si c'est la cause de,
mais depuis un mois
que je travaille sur un grande toile,
j'en ai fait au moins 20
les unes sur les autres
toutes plus dégueulasses
les unes que les autres.
Le résultat est nul.

Je Suis Toujours Aussi Mal Installé
JE NE SAIS SI C'EST LA CAUSE DE

A story of deceptions and disappointments
Longing for Happier Times
Faith has dramatically changed their context

*****

Je ne sais si c´en est la cause, 2009
A Project by Mario García Torres

In the 1960s, two sets of murals were created by the French artist Daniel Buren at the Grapetree Bay Hotel, on the island of St.Croix. The young artist was invited to make these artworks as he was just finishing art school. He first came to the island in 1960 and completed on site a group of figurative works, for the large dinning room of the hotel. He later returned in 1965 to make a mosaic for the pool house area. His interest in the mural format was partly derived from his experiences in Mexico in 1957, where he had seen murals by Diego Rivera and had met David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Buren had difficulty making these artworks and expressed his distaste for them in his writings during this period. But in retrospect, they came to hold an important place within his artistic development. He later acknowledged them as his first in situ projects, a central characteristic of his highly influential Conceptual Art practice that emerged at the end of the decade. His signature style became bold stripe works, taken from commercial shop awnings, which he began to present both inside and outside gallery contexts. In the form of paper posters, they were plastered in the streets of Europe and the U.S. and were understood as a gesture toward breaking down the traditional boundaries between life and art, the street and the museum. Influenced by French deconstructivist philosophy, these works highlighted the surroundings in which they were placed, leading the way toward other artists´ integration of socio-political contexts into Contemporary Art production.

Construction of the Grapetree Bay Hotel began in early 1960 on the Southern Coast of St. Croix. The development of the hotel formed part of the economic transition of the island from an agricultural economy, based on sugar production, to a tourist economy. St. Croix had been purchased by the United States in 1917 from the Danish government for military purposes, but in the Post-War period private investment in tourism was encouraged by the U.S., in an attempt to boost the failing economy of the island.

The hotel had financial problems from the begining. It took over four years to open, as millions of dollars, invested by an American named Farleigh Dickenson, Jr. were mishandled by local administrators and complicated legal and financial battles ensued, involving the lawyer Thibaut Saint Phalle. Large sums were spend on advertising for the hotel, including a blatantly promotional record by the popular steel band musician, Pedrito Altieri. The hotel stayed open for over twenty years and attracted many tourists to its attractive beach location. But it continually struggled to stay open, until in 1989 the devastating Hurricane Hugo forced it to close.

Mario García Torres became interested in the anecdote of the murals in the early 2000s and their troubled and pivotal position within Buren´s oeuvre. The Mexican artist began to research extensively the murals, their post-colonial island location and the various legal and financial battles that surrounded them. In 2005 he visited the island and the abandoned hotel. The first set of murals in the dinning room had been removed, but the mosaic works by the pool house area were still visible. He documented the entropic state of the hotel photographically. These images, projected as slides, along with historical photographs and promotional materials, give form to his installation Je ne sais si c´en est la cause (I don´t know if that was the reason), presented at El Eco. The title of the piece is a phase taken from a letter that Buren wrote to his family while working on the murals, where he describes them as failed works. As part of the project, García Torres commissioned the Mexican musician Mario López Landa to reproduce this text in the form of a melancholic song, which is played on an old record player in the installation and follows a short text that narrates the story of the hotel and the artworks executed there.

During the past ten years, García Torres has advanced an artistic practice involving extensive research into little known art historical moments, investigating and exhibiting his findings in highly subjective ways, which often imbue these narratives with a sense of fiction. The artist is always present within the documentation of his research, at times in a protagonist role, at other times more oblique. Within the slide images of the Grapetree Bay Hotel, in its dilapidated rooms and terraces, overrun with tropical plans and debris, the viewer can note slight interventions that appear to be made by the artist. A phone is shown off-the-hook, two shutters are placed on top one another in a posed manner, square pieces of boards lean against a painted wall in an aestheticized installation. One image focuses on a square wooden door, set into a wall, made of vertical pieces of painted wood, which significantly recalls the stripe works of Buren.

García Torres´s project articulates a reflection on how history is continually used and constructed in retrospect, how it is perpetually manipulated after-the-fact. These works explore history´s inherent fictions, politics and creativity. His artistic investigations are not nostalgic, but rather look for generative models. In Je ne sais si c´en est la cause the younger artist extends and engages the logic inherent in the later conceptual practice of Buren, in order to produce this contemporary piece, through his exploration of the socio-political context in which the French artist´s first site-specific works were produced.

This installation was originally presented in 2009 and is being shown for the first time in Mexico City. For El Eco, García Torres has adapted the work to the characteristics of Mathias Goeritz´s unique architecture. He has specifically chosen not to darken the space completely, but to incorporate into the installation the changing light effects experienced throughout the day in the building. His slide images will appear as the sun begins to set. Chairs that reference a vacation setting provide viewers with a chance to sit, to read, to contemplate these enigmatic and lonely images and listen to the audio recording, echoing from a distant part of the building.

Tobias Ostrander, Curator, Museo El Eco

RAIMUNDAS MALASAUSKAS PRESENTS: 'SCULPTURES OF THE SPACE AGE'

letter handed to the visitors of the exhibition (above)



Curators’ Series #2.
Sculpture Of The Space Age
curated by Raimundas Malasauskas
Exhibition dates: 02.10.2009– 19.12.2009
Opening Reception: 01.10.2009 from 6.30pm

Developed over the last year, Raimundas Malasauskas’s group exhibition Sculpture of the Space Age refers to an exhibition mentioned in J. G. Ballard’s short story The Object of the Attack (1984). Not detailed in the text, the exhibition was supposedly held at the Serpentine Gallery in the early 80’s and exists only as a title in the story.

Malasauskas writes “Sculpture of the Space Age is less than 30 years old, but very few can remember precisely what it was about. Perhaps its content is actually outside of the exhibition. This insight is very specific of the novel’s main character Matthew Young’s tendency of space-time denying. Mr Young, who got fined for being disorderly at the opening of Sculpture of the Space Age at the Serpentine Gallery in the early 80s, is the only person known to have attended the opening that night. When in the 90s two British artists, Graham Gussin and Jeremy Millar, came across this fictional exhibition mentioned in Ballard’s short story, they got carried away by the idea of translating the exhibition from the space of the story to the space of the gallery. This curatorial premise led them to a conversation with the author J.G. Ballard who suggested a few artists who could have been in the show, although none have been mentioned in the original narrative. Despite the exciting curatorial process Sculpture of the Space Age did not open at the Serpentine Gallery in London in the 90s as Graham Gussin and Jeremy Millar intended. Their time-travelling experiment of making an exhibition turned into an archive, which is now stored in a cardboard box.

Sculpture of the Space Age became an anachronism that keeps living on its own ambivalence as something that could have happened, then almost happened again. It openly contains its own possibility and impossibility, as this new diversion suggests: Mario Garcia Torres with Ryan Gander and Gintaras Didziapetris with Rosalind Nashashibi bring Sculpture of the Space Age to where it could have been and where it has never been yet: the year 2009. The show looks as if it was installed in the early 80s, but will open its door only tomorrow.”

http://www.davidrobertsartfoundation.com/exhibitions/_24/

http://www.rye.tw/

ART GENEALOGY: MARTIN'S HOTEL DRAWINGS, MATTHIEU'S 'I AM...' AND MARIO'S 'I PROMISE...'

MARIO GARCIA TORRES / MARIO LOPEZ LANDA AT PROYECTOS MONCLOVA

Early Color Video Tapes
Mario García Torres

Black Mustang Ford
Mario Lopez Landa

Opening
Wednesday September 3rd, 2008 - 7:30 pm
Goya 6 Col. Mixcoac, México D.F., México
Tel. + 52 (55) 5563 7156

Gallery hours:
tuesday / friday 11.00 am - 06.00 pm
saturday 11.00 am - 04.00 pm
By appointment + 52 (55) 5563 7156

DISCO COPPERTONE IN ATHENS!

Aleksandra MIr's greek souvenir T-shirts and mugs on sale at Heaven on Earth


exhibition views


Passport Control booths with Olaf Nicolai’s wallpaper rainbow posters


Nikos Alexiou’s "Table-cloth" curtain and Ian Kiaer golden ball


Mario Garcia Torres slide show on Martin Kippenberger’s MOMAS


Christodoulos Panayiotou’s "Utopian Songs" video


One of Carolina Caycedo's flags


Miss Caycedo in front of Passport Control


Pablo Leon de la Barra and Carolina Caycedo

Disco Coppertone
Opening 07.09.2007, 19:00
Megaron OLP, Akti Miaouli 10, Piraeus
From 07.09.2007 to 12.10.2007

Disco Coppertone: beach bars, sand in your ears, cicadas, the taste of salt on your skin, a good long siesta, a stroll through a sunlit museum, a trip by sea watching a port appear slowly in the horizon, a different sense of time. The associations are endless as most people reminisce their holidays or hope once again to break away from their daily routine, to come closer to nature and to take time off.

Tourism is a booming industry, providing a setting for people to live out their fantasies and escape. In reality it provides little in terms of a break from the norm, simply allowing people to consume and purchase another life style for a few days a year. Holiday destinations and indeed whole countries re-brand themselves in a saturated and competitive economy. Tourism is no longer necessarily about difference but instead a provider of the same, albeit with a slightly altered flavor. Hotel complexes and indeed whole cities are born, taking over more and more space, serving up what is desired rather than providing what already exists. Brochures and holiday planners direct your vision of what is worth seeing. Tourists’ insatiable gazes consume places and people, leaving behind a series of snap shots of flattened experiences. Nature is no longer left as it is - instead it is framed and contextualized within the preconceptions of a given culture, often to the sound of happy music.

Aleksandra Mir’s mass manufactured t-shirts, mugs and linen bags work as souvenirs of the exhibition whilst playing with ideas of authenticity. Souvenirs tend to symbolize an ‘authentic experience’, which tourists take home with them in an attempt to cling on to that feeling of difference and exoticism that holidays provide. Aleksandra Mir’s designs approximate the classical designs of other more standard souvenirs and yet there is something different, more awkward or even more stylized (reminiscent of Uderzo’s designs for Asterix at the Olympics) pushing the links to authenticity to an extreme.

Nikos Alexiou’s textured wall hanging made out of table cloths -of the kind found in taverns all over Greece- dyed in different shades of blue, recall the colours found all over the Aegean, the never ending blue sky and sea. Simultaneously the work reflects the patterns found within the closed space of the departure lounge revealing the repetitiveness of nature even in the most artificial of places.

Christodoulos Panayiotou’s performance, “To Be Willing to March into Hell for a Heavenly Cause” forms part of his ongoing interest in American musicals produced during the cold war which use songs based on the weather to imply and propose a better and more prosperous future. The documentation of a performance of seven of these “Utopian Songs” by a young and handsome Danish singer on board a ship travelling through the Aegean reveal a world in transit living permanently in hope for a better day.

Olaf Nicolai’s posters infiltrate the generic architecture of the cruise ship departure lounge injecting its grey everydayness with bombastic colour. Nicolai’s intervention and use of the seven colours of the rainbow suggest tourisms’ false promises of a different dream like state when away from drab reality.

Carolina Caycedo’s trans-national flags suggest a world where nationalities are hybrids, where people from all over the world share a common space or the common culture of tourism where all difference is flattened when in a queue to check in. The flags however also work as a sore reminder of their symbolic power and the tension and fears such hybrids can provoke.

Mario Garcia Torres project suggests a rethinking of previous art practices and how they would function today. He literally steps into Martin Kippenberger’s shoes creating an exhibition in what could today have been the Museum of Modern Art Syros. Like Kippenberger he uses the show as an excuse to create a poster project and a slide show documenting his own personal quest on the island of Syros, whilst questioning who and what directs your vision in a place, in contrast to what in the end there actually is to see.

Ian Kiaer sculpture’s works as a survival balloon, luminous and silver, hinting both holidays as a strategy for survival in fast paced Western life but also similarly as he plays with scale in the sculpture itself to human life, which in its fragility clings on to ideas and hopes, larger than life in order once again to survive.

http://www.locusathens.com/

MARIO GARCIA TORRES DOES SOME KIPPENBERGER TOURISM IN SYROS

Mario Garcia Torres follows the footsteps of Maria Papadimitriou and Pablo Leon de la Barra and does some Kippenberger tourism in the island of Syros.