EVANGELIA KOKKINOU


Evangelia Kokkinou Artist, Athens Greece

Exhibition 2004 - 2007

STATEMENT

I have been interested in art since childhood. This passion lead me to study art. Now I work as a professionl artist. My work has been characterized for its variety of techiques and materials. Each work has its own psychological meaning and everything is derived through my life-expressions.

INSTALLATION ART

The term installation comes from the word ï¿½installï¿½, which the dictionary explains as ï¿½ï¿½to establish a place in position ready for use.ï¿½ From this source, installation can be interpreted as meaning the whole place, which is established. But does installation have the same meaning in the frame of art culture?

Many artists work on paintings, others on sculptures, but there are many works, which exist beyond the frames of a painting and appear as a sculpture piece. This work is classed as being an installation in the terms of art context and it has the notion of exhibition and of display. Installation represents the artistï¿½s aspiration to extend their practical work from the studio and painting to a larger scale and a larger position say to a public space. Artists began to develop their ideas and they reached to produce an art -work, by controlling it, in different dimensions.

It may seem that the development of installations is fairly recent, but looking back over many years we will discover that installations have a surprisingly long history. People used to draw and paint on the stones in caves to express themselves or to communicate with the rest of their people. But at that period the concepts of ï¿½artï¿½ and ï¿½installationï¿½ were unfamiliar with their knowledge. However, installations did exist and were developed by artists later on, and expanded into the fields of contemporary art. In subsequent years, artists expressed themselves in two or three-dimensional works, and produced work, which was relative to architecture and not to painting, which reflected the growing, trend in Western culture at that time. Art, generally, was combined with architecture. The tombs of Egypt, the temples of Greece and Rome and the cathedrals of the Middle Ages can be described in the art culture, as an installation piece.

Moving on to more recent times, installation can be said to have started with the Futurism, Cubism and collages, Duchampï¿½s ready-mades, Dada and constructions, Fontanaï¿½s happenings, Kleinï¿½s performances and to Minimal works during the period of 1960ï¿½s and 1970ï¿½s. Many artists have used installation, and its history has been expanded in different moments, movements and times. Installation is not a drawing or a painting, but it is a piece of art, which has the notion of space and time. It has been used also, to describe a kind of art making which rejects concentration on one object in favor of a consideration of the relationships between a number of elements or of the interaction between things and their contexts. Installation is like a painting with its frame. It is a large object, its frame is the space, the gallery and the spectator is being asked to be one with the installation and participate in that space.

In the Middle Ages we have the collaboration between the art form and the mass culture commodity capitalism. Later on with Futurism new techniques and materials were applied to the old media. In 1920, the ï¿½Realistic Manifestoï¿½ of Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo proclaimed that ï¿½Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art must be constructedï¿½. ï¿½Space and timeï¿½ they said ï¿½are reborn to us todayï¿½, a reference to the Futuristsï¿½ first manifesto, written in 1909, in which Marineti had said ï¿½Time and Space died yesterdayï¿½ (Installation art, p.17-18).
ï¿½Beuys does not change the state of the object within the discourse itself. Quite the contrary, he dilutes and dissolves the conceptual precision of Duchampsï¿½ readymade by reintegrating the object into the most traditional and na?ve context of representation of meaning, the idealist metaphor: this objects stands for that idea, and that idea is represented in this object.ï¿½ (Installation art, p20).

ï¿½Installationï¿½ describes Kleinï¿½s performances with nude women. The nude models were his brushes and he was doing his show. In the mid-sixties and mid-seventies, in America, there are the Minimalism and post-Minimalism movements where an installation has a more understandable meaning. The specific object works so simply and becomes at the same time a very strong piece of art. Space, light and times are very characteristic words for a minimalist work of art. We are dealing now not with a straightforward meeting of viewer and artwork in the idealised atmosphere of the gallery, but of an experience within a complex and expanded field. Even at a certain moment in American art, canvas started to have another meaning. It was a painting, a piece of art but rather than being a space where the artist expressed, produced or designed; it became a space where there was an event. For example the works of the famous artist Jackson Pollock. The paintings look like happenings, events and not so much a painting with a design or an expressive work.
Robertsï¿½ Rauschenberg paintings in the early sixties were a combination of a painting with some other materials and techniques. What happens generally is that there is a freedom in the art works and that there is a combination of the object with the environment.

Present day installations, represented as a generic term, cover a large part of the art practice and contemporary art. A large field of art, where architecture, performance and visual arts participate. It is a very recent method of producing art and in the last few years seems to be been expanded upon more and more by many artists. With an installation, everything can become something. Each common object of our life can become a piece of artwork. Anything can be something, a house, a garden; large objects have a context and content. But any of these objects could have been related to location, space, time, environment, duration, site, and gallery. It is very important for an installation to think about the above terms, so that there is a subject, a story and not only an object, which is being displayed without any meaning.

Installation is generally a mixed media, a combination of different materials and methods being divided into four different parts. These are site, media, Museum and architecture. Artists like Duchamp, as we mentioned before, brought objects into the space of the gallery and presented them as work of arts. Some others used media, such as photography, computer, TV, video or slides films. By using media, artists achieve to transfer time and position into an area other than the one being displayed. They mostly represent an event in another time and position and the spectator has been asked to move into that moment, in order to understand and follow the meaning of the art piece.

An installation can be a whole Museum and not just a place to display art. Many artists used Museums as installation pieces, by adding letters or constructions in them and by representing the whole building as an artwork. Museum based installation works with this tension, proposing an erasure of the distinction between what has traditionally been the museumï¿½s object of attention- the remnant of relic- and that, which is newly offered for scrutiny. Moreover, artists, install pieces in an architectural way, having the aspects of inside and outside, the being out-into space.

In general installations, even their abstract meanings and metaphors, most of the times are more acceptable by the public, as their participation give them the chance to make the piece of art more understandable, rather than a piece of work which is unobserved. The spectator seems to ï¿½playï¿½ with the objects and materials, ï¿½performï¿½ or ï¿½actingï¿½ in the space with the work. And that participation requires from the viewer to identify the meanings and accept the work.

It seems that since installations has been further developed by artists, paintings became poorer in terms of how the viewer received the meaning of the work. The two dimensions and three dimensions worked in a better way to convey understanding of the metaphorical qualities of the work rather than a painting displayed on the wall. It is paradigmatically like how a two years old child learns to recognise objects and their meaning by touching them and ï¿½playingï¿½ with them, rather than seeing them from a book or from a distance. This sense of feeling, touch and taste are notions, which help the viewer to read the meaning of the work.
Therefore, installation cannot be seen as sculpture or as painting, but it is not either a theatre or performance. Firstly, the object in an installation artwork creates the illusion of it in the space rather than in sculpture the object seemed to be displayed on a surface, which the public in not allowed to touch or feel. In sculpture the object works by itself and it is like a paining with its frame for being observe only. The difference with installation is that the object by itself is an art piece but the position and the space, which is surrounded, is important for its meaning. The installation pieces are displaying into the space of the gallery, the room, the garden e.t.c and the role of the observer is to participate by walking around it and see it in different view points, touch it and feel it, performing with it.
Michael Fried explained that art approaches the condition of theatre. At every moment the work itself is a manifest. But for Fried the theatrical is severed from the modernist ideal of a wholly manifest thing ï¿½ in ï¿½ itself by virtue of its contingent unfolding in real time, its moment ï¿½ by ï¿½moment dynamic with a receiving audience, its adherence to the paradigm of subjectivity. At minimalists work for example, he argued that the objects surrendered their objecthood by foregrounding the space that they occupied and the duration of the spectatorï¿½s experience of observation. He therefore asserted that the object was time ï¿½ dependent and hence spectator ï¿½ dependent, and that it was a theatrical and not art.
So, by Michael Fried opinion, installation cannot be seen as modern art but as thatre aspect. Performance and the spectatorï¿½s absence are important for an installation piece. Rather than in a sculpture, the object by itself is art despite the time or the place and the positioning.

Installation is a new method of producing artwork, which developed more on different parts such as site, gallery architecture and soon after with the development of technology, media was acceptable as artwork as well.
Installation became a way of expression in which different kinds of materials were used. Frames were unseen and space and position became more important.
Installation as an art form has existed from as far back in history as the earliest cave paintings of Homo-sapien man, but through time it developed more and expanded more in the art field.

Since installation became a concept, art began to be more enjoyable for the spectator and often more understandable, as the viewer has to participate. Installation is being expanded into space, media, museum and performance and actually opens the field of art.

E.KOKKINOU

COPIES OF EVENGELIA KOKKINOU'S WORK HAVE BEEN PLACED ON THE THE TRAILBLAZER .

THIS ONE OF THE PIECES

UNTITLED, BY EVANGELIA KOKKINOU

SEIDL STUDIOS PERMANENT COLLECTION