Two Days After Forever

Christodoulos Panayiotou, representing Cyprus at Venice Art Biennale, uses archaeology as the discipline to compose his exploration on the social-economic mechanisms that govern the relationship between tradition and modernity.

Christodoulos Panayiotou, Two days after forever, Biennale 2015
Visitors breathe an ancient and vigorous air as they enter the Cyprus Pavilion, preceded by a garden with four traditional ceramic vases containing the solid roots of the Noisette rose, a fragrant flower variety dating from the early 20th century and the product of a geographical mix of France and South Carolina.
Christodoulos Panayiotou’s solo show Two Days After Forever continues to ride this wave as it alternates history and its present-day reflection in an exhibition that unfolds on several different levels, bringing together representational languages that look to spatial architecture and its point of balance between memory and narration.
Christodoulos Panayiotou, <i>Two Days After Forever</i>, Padiglione Cipro, Biennale Arte di Venezia 2015
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Two Days After Forever, Cyprus Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2015
Christodoulos constructs visual fantasies in a choreography of small but powerful gestures, generating penetrating reflections on the social-economic mechanisms that govern the relationship between tradition and modernity. Archaeology is the discipline chosen by the artist to compose his exploration.
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Two Days After Forever, Padiglione Cipro, Biennale Arte di Venezia 2015
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Two Days After Forever, Cyprus Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2015
Hidden behind every excavation, behind every reassembled mosaic on the walls and behind the uncovering of archaeological rejects is an almost ritual performativity that oozes out of the objects not as a process but as a form in itself and their completion.
Shoes made from the leather of fake handbags purchased from Venetian street hawkers and a Cypriot-banknote mountain – shredded straight after the introduction of the Euro and spilling out of the rooms at the rear – explore issues of authorship and production.
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Two Days After Forever, Padiglione Cipro, Biennale Arte di Venezia 2015
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Two Days After Forever, Cyprus Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2015
A terracotta floor painstakingly arranged in the central hall covers the building’s original floor with an earthenware layer produced at Limassol and removed from an archaeology site during the retrieval of ancient artefacts. Spoil Heap spreads itself across the room and acts as an unscheduled stage, suddenly hosting the performer Jean Capelle in a male version of Nikiya’s Death from La Bayadère, choreographed by Panayiotou.
Christodoulos Panayiotou, <i>Two Days After Forever</i>, Cyprus Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2015
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Two Days After Forever, Cyprus Pavilion, Venice Art Biennale, 2015

The route developed by Christodoulos centres on a generally worldly and material vision. The recomposed floors, the earth, the shoes (Untitled, 2015), the real rolled-up “red carpet” (Operation Serenade, 2012) and the theatre backdrop. A recurrent motif that has accompanied the artist’s work since 2007, the backdrop reproduces the line of the horizon in an “extra-theatrical” gesture and concept that alludes to a disenchanted perception of the theatre tradition.

In Venice, it was hung up and unfurled once again in a single action for The Parting Discourse at the Teatro Goldoni, a stone’s throw from the Pavilion. Folded up again, it lies on the undulating floor of Palazzo Malipiero, revealing a portion of printed sea and leaving the door open to the reading of another story.

 

© all rights reserved

until 22 November 2015
Christodoulos Panayiotou
Two Days After Forever
curated by Omar Kholeif
Cyprus Pavilion
Palazzo Malipiero
Sestiere San Marco 3079, Venice

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