»Instructions for Happiness«

Featuring works by Anna Sophie Berger, Liudvikas Buklys, Heinrich Dunst, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Christian Falsnaes, Benjamin Hirte, Barbara Kapusta, Stelios Karamanolis, Alexandra Kostakis, Adriana Lara, Lara Nasser, Rallou Panagiotou, Natasha Papadopoulou, Angelo Plessas, Maruša Sagadin, Hans Schabus, Björn Segschneider, Socratis Socratous, Misha Stroj, Stefania Strouza, Jannis Varelas, Kostis Velonis and Salvatore Viviano; curated by Severin Dünser and Olympia Tzortzi

Lekka 23 – 25 & Perikleous 34, Athens

December 21 — 30, 2016

Happiness can be understood as a basic human need. And the exhibition is all about the personal pursuit for happiness. But instructions for happiness? As happiness is quite an individual matter, instructions for happiness are of course a pretty absurd promise. Regardless of whether happiness is sought after in the interpersonal, the immediate or the everyday respectively the beauty of the small things in life – the exhibition tries to question the notions of happiness.

Selected artists were invited to contribute a work, that also includes a manual: A work that – based on an instruction – invites to do something, for instance use an object, react to a situation, interact with others under certain rules, perform something for others or oneself or simply initiates a thought process. The form of the work (as well as the instruction) could take any possible shape – resulting in artworks that are as diverse and formally divergent as the technical possibilities. But the seemingly chaotic diversity also reflects a plurality of perspectives on happiness that the artist (as well as society) share.

Aside from the question of happiness in the context of today’s Athens, the exhibition also tries to reflect upon art’s possibilities of immediate effects on society. Thus the boarders of the power of the aesthetic field can be questioned in the show on one side, while tracing the notions of happiness on the other side through experiencing the works in order to maybe also find answers for oneself.

Kindly supported by The Federal Chancellery of Austria, NON SPACES and KUP 

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»Instructions for Happiness«

Συμμετέχουν: Anna Sophie Berger, Liudvikas Buklys, Heinrich Dunst, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Christian Falsnaes, Benjamin Hirte, Barbara Kapusta, Stelios Karamanolis, Alexandra Kostakis, Adriana Lara, Lara Nasser, Rallou Panagiotou, Natasha Papadopoulou, Angelo Plessas, Maruša Sagadin, Hans Schabus, Björn Segschneider, Socratis Socratous, Misha Stroj, Stefania Strouza, Jannis Varelas, Kostis Velonis, Salvatore Viviano

Υπό την επιμέλεια: Severin Dünser, Olympia Tzortzi

Λέκκα 23 – 25 & Περικλέους 34, Αθήνα

21.12. — 30.12.2016

Η ευτυχία μπορεί να κατανοηθεί ως μια από τις βασικές ανάγκες του ανθρώπου. Ο Freud έλεγε ότι σκοπός της ζωής είναι η επίτευξη και η διατήρηση της ευτυχίας – και στην αναζήτησή της επιδίδεται η έκθεση με τίτλο «Instructions for Happiness». Αλλά είναι δυνατό να υφίστανται οδηγίες;

Μια σειρά από Έλληνες και διεθνείς καλλιτέχνες έχουν κληθεί να καταθέσουν την δική τους εικαστική απάντηση σχετικά με την κατάκτηση της ευτυχίας η οποία, στον βαθμό ασφαλώς που είναι για τον καθένα υποκειμενική, δεν μπορεί παρά να καθορίζει και τις «απαντήσεις» ως αυστηρά προσωπικές. Υπό αυτήν την οπτική, όλα τα εκθέματα απηχούν διαφορετικές προσεγγίσεις ως προς την μορφή αλλά και ως προς τους «κανόνες» που θα πρέπει κανείς να εφαρμόσει (ή και να απορρίψει) προκειμένου να εκπληρώσει, έστω και πρόσκαιρα, το πολυπόθητο αποτέλεσμα και, πάντως, όλα αυτοσκηνοθετούνται ως «οδηγίες προς απόκτηση ευτυχίας». Συγχρόνως, όμως, τα έργα δεν λησμονούν ότι η ευτυχία είναι ατομική υπόθεση, ότι ουσιαστικά κάθε υπόδειξη πραγμάτωσής της συνιστά ανεδαφική ή ουτοπική υπόσχεση. Εντούτοις δεν παραιτούνται. Κι έτσι καταφέρουν να στρέψουν την προσοχή στα μικρά αντικείμενα της ζωής και να αναδείξουν, με απρόσμενο τρόπο, την ομορφιά τους (ιδού μια στιγμή ευτυχίας!) – ή εφιστούν τη προσοχή στην «ευτυχή συγκυρία» ή και στην ευδαιμονία που μπορεί, φέρ’ ειπείν, να πηγάζει από άγνοια ή παραγνώριση της πραγματικότητας ή και από τη ζωηρή φαντασία ακόμη.

Προπάντων, όλα τα έργα της έκθεσης αμφισβητούν τις παγιωμένες αντιλήψεις για το τι είναι ευτυχία και θέτουν το ερώτημα του κατά πόσο η ίδια η τέχνη μπορεί να αποβεί «πρόξενος ευτυχίας», όχι απλώς ωραιοποιώντας αλλά ενεργά μεταμορφώνοντας τον γύρω μας κόσμο. Και εντέλει θέτουν το ερώτημα των ερωτημάτων: μήπως η ευτυχία προϋποθέτει πάντοτε την ευτυχία του άλλου, δηλαδή, θα πρέπει επιτακτικά να εννοηθεί σε ένα πολιτικό πλαίσιο;

Adriana Lara

»Less is More«

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

September 24 — Oktober 26, 2014

Adriana Lara is interested in the interplay between the things in the world, their appearance, their linguistic and symbolic representation and the problems thereby emerging. Her exhibitions operate like models of the correlations of the order of things and signs, handing over questions of interpretation and meaning to the viewer. She is pursuing a very playful, post-conceptual practice, in which contents are treated on an equal footing with their objects and their sensual experience, realizing works depending on the matter in question in a variety of materials and media.

The realization of artworks is also the focal point of her exhibition at 21er Raum. What does production actually mean, what does it imply? What are the expectations that works should fulfill, and are there promises that artists should neglect? Adriana Lara answers with a series of gestures that are echoing the title of the show. An intervention in spike art quarterly spread over several pages reads as an endless sequence of zeros after a dot, ending with a ‘1’. It represents a cipher which gets smaller (but more expensive as magazine space) as it grows in pages, literally embodying the exhibition title “Less is More”. 

Toilet seats arranged at same height along the wall (“Beneath Technology #1-5”) and hung just like one does with art can be interpreted in this direction, too. On the one hand, their presentation as objects of art alludes to Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” and his reduction of production to a concept or idea. On the other hand, the plastic objects refer to the symbolic capital of what is legitimate, the toilet seat as an institutional symbol. Behaving like monochrome paintings or heraldic plaques, the toilet covers sit on quite literal zeros. Their function is reduced to a visual experience, directing the view like a frame to what lies beneath: the wall. While the zeros beneath are always concealed and simultaneously disclosable, the pieces are hung in variable positions along the room, suggesting what lies beneath them at times, obviating them at others. 

The architectural intervention in the room titled “The Real Estate” is imitating angled walls found in top floor apartments, former attics reducing the space in a ‘productive’ way, as the artist states. This reductive act of production is complemented with one of the toilet seats hung in the slanted wall that opens slightly by the force of gravity. The decline of the wall is repeated in a photograph next to it. It shows an Austrian porcelain figurine, which went wrong in the oven. It can’t stand on its own, but in this case gravity is subverted with the help of photographic framing. Deprived of its function as a commercial object, the figurine is obsolete and stored for didactic purposes in the Augarten Museum workshop, and yet it is still not exempt of eventual symbolic capital. This transformational moment is also topic of the video that Lara filmed at Kunsthistorisches Museum and describes the trajectory of the archeological Egyptian objects from being found, distributed, unearthed, packed and shipped to its installation at the 19th century museum. Opposite to this, there is a crate, hung like a painting, found in the 21er Haus depot. This also recalls structurally caused transformation processes, except in this case, it recalls the minimum value perhaps equal to the number in the magazine – compared to the Marcel Broodthaers work that it carried inside, now hanging outside, in another exhibition on the same floor of the Museum.

While the relation of production and reduction is explored, the concept of meaning and significance is presented in its exponential condition – frozen in a stage of potentiality. 

Adriana Lara was born in Mexico City in 1978, where she lives and works. She works in parallel for Perros Negros, a curatorial collective co-founded by her in 2003 as editor of the yearly magazine Pazmaker. Her work has been recently shown in the following exhibitions: Let's Not Jump Into Concrete, Independenza, Rome (solo, 2014); Marrakech Biennale 5 (2014); Documenta 13, Kassel (2012); NY-USA, Algus Greenspon, New York (solo, 2012); S.S.O.R., Kunsthalle Basel (solo, 2012); and Scryyns and Interesting Theories, Air de Paris, Paris (solo, 2012).

Exhibition catalogue:
21er Raum 2012 – 2016
Edited by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Severin Dünser, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paul Feigelfeld, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Luisa Ziaja on exhibitions by Anna-Sophie Berger, Andy Boot, Vittorio Brodmann, Andy Coolquitt, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Iman Issa, Barbara Kapusta, Susanne Kriemann, Adriana Lara, Till Megerle, Adrien Missika, Noële Ody, Sarah Ortmeyer, Mathias Pöschl, Rosa Rendl, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Anja Ronacher, Constanze Schweiger, Zin Taylor, Philipp Timischl, Rita Vitorelli and Salvatore Viviano
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/Englisch
Softcover, 21 × 29,7 cm, 272 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2016
ISBN 978-3-903114-18-0