ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF THESSALONIKI

For this year’s 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki invited Constantin Xenakis, an artist who derives philosophical ideas and symbolic forms from the ancient Greek culture, and organizes the exhibition HEL(L)AS! Everywhere! HEL(L)AS! Παντού!. The position of a contemporary artist in a museum of ancient art is usually justified by seeing it in terms of a “discourse” between the old and the new. In the case of Xenakis, this “silent discourse” constitutes a particular challenge for the artist, as –in his words- he is offered the opportunity to experience the ancient Greek world, to which he believes that spiritually and metaphysically belongs. Indeed, in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki the artistic coexistence of the contemporary works of Xenakis and the ancient artefacts is achieved in the most direct way: in the premises of the permanent exhibitions of the museum, i.e. in the contemporary “natural environment” of the ancient objects. In this exhibition we present Xenakis’ works from 1970 up until today, through which the artist comments both on the current reality and on transcendent, inter-temporal values. The same also applies to the antiquities in the collection of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki: they express collective values and the aesthetics of the time they were manufactured and used. In this vein, the work of Xenakis finds in the halls of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki its spiritual match; it encounters its original references and acquires an attractive interpretive framework.