2018 Andreas Lolis portfolio

THE BREEDER       

ANDREAS LOLIS PORTFOLIO



THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com 1www.thebreedersystem.com rue des Lilas, MC 98000, Monaco, t: +377 97987990, monaco@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com



!

Andreas Lolis, “Antidoron The EMST Collection”, Friedericianum, Kassel, documenta 14, 2017

!

Andreas Lolis, installation view at Thessaloniki Biennial 2017 curated by Sirago Tsiara

Andreas Lolis, The Garden Sees, curated by Anna Kafetsi, Athens Concert Hall, 2017

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

!

! ! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 262 x 61 x 4 cm

!

! !

!

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, detail view, marble, 262 x 61 x 4 cm

!

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

!

! ! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 262 x 61 x 4 cm

!

!

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

!

! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 262 x 61 x 4 cm

! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 262 x 61 x 4 cm

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 110x60x25 cm

Andreas Lolis, Undercurrents, 2015, installation view at The Breeder, Athens

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 165x150x70 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 165x150x70 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 153x280x40 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 120x105x30 cm

!

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2015, marble, 120x305x260 cm installation view at “La Vie Moderne”, 13th Biennale de Lyon, curated by Ralph Rugoff

!

! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2015, marble, 120x305x260 cm installation view at “La Vie Moderne”, 13th Biennale de Lyon, curated by Ralph Rugoff

!

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2015, marble, 120x305x260 cm installation view at “La Vie Moderne”, 13th Biennale de Lyon, curated by Ralph Rugoff

!

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2014, marble installation in 45 parts, 120x305x260 cm

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2014, marble installation in 45 parts, 120x305x260 cm

!

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2014, marble, dimensions variable

!

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2014, marble installation in 45 parts, 120x305x260 cm

!

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2014, marble, dimensions variable

!

Andreas Lolis, Permanent Residence, 2014, marble installation in 45 parts, 120x305x260 cm

!

! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, dimensions variable

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, dimensions variable

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, dimensions variable

! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, dimensions variable

!

!

Andreas Lolis, installation view at The Breeder Monaco, 2013

Andreas Lolis, installation view at The Breeder Monaco, 2013!

!

Andreas Lolis, installation view at The Breeder Monaco, 2013

Andreas Lolis, installation view at The Breeder Monaco, 2013

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 160x60x 2 cm Andreas Lolis , Untitled, 2013, marble, 64x64x9 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 64x64x9 cm

Andreas Lolis, installation view at The Breeder Monaco, 2013

Andreas Lolis, installation view at The Breeder Monaco, 2013

Andreas Lolis, installation view at The Breeder Monaco, 2013

standing Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 112x30x14 cm bottom left Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 50x20x13cm bottom right Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 50x18x5 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, detail, marble, 112x30x14 cm

top Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 50x18x5 cm bottom Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 50x20x13cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, 64x18x32 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 40x40x27 cm

left Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble in five parts, 37.5x27x21 cm right Andreas Lolis , Untitled, 2013, marble, 66x17x46 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble in five parts, 37.5x27x21 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 70x60x35 cm and Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 40x25x20 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 70x60x35 cm Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 40x25x20 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013,marble, 83x53x11 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble in three parts, each 50x50x25 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble in three parts, each 50x50x25 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, detail, marble in three parts, each 50x50x25 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 17x45x38 cm

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 40x30x17 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 43x18x17 cm

!

!

Exhibition view: Vadim Fishkin, Fernanda Gomes, Andreas Lolis, "The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure", Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland, 2013

Exhibition view: Vadim Fishkin, Fernanda Gomes, Andreas Lolis, "The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure", Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland, 2013

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2014, marble in four parts, detailed view (80x83x20 cm, 10x10x10 cm)

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2014, marble in four parts, detailed view (80x83x20 cm, 10x10x10 cm)

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2014, marble in four parts, 110x100 x 15 cm (100x50x2 cm, 65x17x5 cm, 60x25x2 cm, 115x80x13 cm)

! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2014, marble in four parts, detailed view 110x100 x 15 cm (100x50x2 cm, 65x17x5 cm, 60x25x2 cm, 115x80x13 cm)

! !

!

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2014, marble in four parts, detailed view 110x100 x 15 cm (100x50x2 cm, 65x17x5 cm, 60x25x2 cm, 115x80x13 cm)

!

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2014, marble in four parts, detailed view 110x100 x 15 cm (100x50x2 cm, 65x17x5 cm, 60x25x2 cm, 115x80x13 cm)

!

Andreas Lolis , Untitled, 2013, marble in two parts, part I: 83x53x11 cm, part II: 47x9x6 cm

Andreas Lolis , Untitled, 2013, marble in two parts, part I: 64x18x32 cm, part II: 39x27x20 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 112x30x14 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, Moroccan marble, 18x67x45 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, dimensions variable, installation view at Frieze New York Sculpture Park, curated by Tom Eccels

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, dimensions variable, installation view at Frieze New York Sculpture Park, curated by Tom Eccels

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, dimensions variable, installation view at Frieze New York Sculpture Park, curated by Tom Eccels

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, marble, 40x40x6 cm Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, marble, 40x40x6 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 32x45x38 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 32x45x38 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, marble, 96x78x21



Andreas Lolis, marble sculptures, installation view

Andreas Lolis, Untitled (brown box), 2013, marble, 32x45x38 cm Andreas Lolis, Untitled (styrofoam), 2013, marble, 59x51x5 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 50x20x8 cm

Andreas Lolis, 21st Century Relics Composition in 9 parts, 2012,marble,installation dimensions 470x280x118cm,installation view at Frieze Sculpture Park, London 2012

Andreas Lolis, 21st Century Relics Composition in 9 parts, 2012,marble,installation dimensions 470x280x118cm, installation view at Frieze Sculpture Park, London 2012

Andreas Lolis, 21st Century Relics Composition in 9 parts, 2012, marble, detail view 64x112x39cm & top 72x72x33cm at Frieze Sculpture Park, London 2012

Andreas Lolis, 21st Century Relics Composition in 9 parts, 2012, marble, detail view 40x40x6cm at Frieze Sculpture Park, London 2012

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, Moroccan marble, 122x100x87 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, Moroccan marble, Detail view, 70x57x30 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, Moroccan marble and Dionysian marble, 166x46x13 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, Dionysian marble, 76x50x47 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, Moroccan marble, 77x30x17 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, Dionysian marble, Detail view, 160x61x2 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, detail view, Dionysian marble, 135x92x15 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2012, detail view, Moroccan marble and Dionysian marble, 120x50x27 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 36x93x50cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble in two parts, part I 90x22 x11cm apx, part II 55x45 x5cm, overall installation 90x86x18 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2011, Moroccan marble, 20x50x36 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2011, detail view, Moroccan marble, 20x50x36 cm

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2011, Marble, 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME, Diplareios School, Installation Shot

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2011, Marble, 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME, Diplareios School, Detail

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2011, Marble, 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME, Diplareios School, Detail

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 53x63x16cm

!

!

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2015, marble, 100x50x12cm

! ! !

Andreas Lolis, Untitled, 2013, marble, 26x40x19cm

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

THE BREEDER ! ! ! ! ! !

ANDREAS LOLIS BIOGRAPHY SELECTED TEXTS ! ! ! ! ! ! !

!

THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com 1 rue des Lilas, MC 98000, Monaco, t: +377 97987990, monaco@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com

!

THE BREEDER ANDREAS LOLIS Andreas Lolis (b. 1970) lives in Athens and is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts and the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts.

His selected solo exhibitions include: “Undercurrents” at The Breeder in Athens (2015), The Breeder Monaco (2013) and at Mϋnchner Kϋnstlerhaus (2011).

Selected group shows include: “Antidoron The EMST Collection”, Friedericianum, Kassel, documenta 14 (2017); “New Acquisitions 2014-2017”, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2017); “The Garden Sees”, curated by Anna Kafetsi, Athens Concert Hall (2017); Thessaloniki Biennial 2017 curated by Sirago Tsiara (2017); “The Body, the Soul, The Place”, National Art Museum of China, 7th Beijing Biennial of Contemporary Art (2017); “Yoko Ono Lumiere De L’Aube” at Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon (2016), 13th Biennale de Lyon “La Vie Moderne”, curated by Ralph Rugoff (2015); “Hell As Pavillion” curated by Nadia Argyropoulou in Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2013) and “Monodrome” the 3rd Athens Biennial, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou and Poka Yio (2011). Andreas Lolis is teaching at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Art (20162018). Andreas Lolis is represented by The Breeder, Athens

Ο Ανδρέας Λόλης (γεν. 1970) ζει στην Αθήνα και είναι απόφοιτος της ΑΣΚΤ Αθηνών και της Ακαδηµίας Καλών Τεχνών της Carrara στην Ιταλία. Επιλεγµένες ατοµικές εκθέσεις: “Undercurrents”, The Breeder, Αθήνα (2015); The Breeder Monaco, στο Μόντε Κάρλο (2013) και Mϋnchner Kϋnstlerhaus στο Μόναχο (2011). Επιλεγµένες οµαδικές εκθέσεις: “Αντίδωρον – Η Συλλογή του ΕΜΣΤ’, Friedericianum, Κάσελ, documenta 14 (2017); “Νέα Αποκτήµατα 2014-2017”, Εθνικό Μουσείο Σύγχρονης Τέχνης ΕΜΣΤ, Αθήνα (2017); “Ο Κήπος Βλέπει”, επιµέλεια Άννα Καφέτση, Μέγαρο Μουσικής Αθηνών (2017); Μπιενάλε Θεσσαλονίκης 2017 επιµέλεια Συραγώ Τσιάρα (2017); “The Body, the Soul, The Place”, Εθνικό Μουσείο της Κίνας, 7η Μπιενάλε Σύγχρονης Τέχνης, Πεκίνο (2017); “Yoko Ono Lumiere De L’Aube” Μουσείο Σύγχρονης Τέχνης Λυόν (2016), 13η Μπιενάλε της Λυόν, “La Vie Moderne”, επιµέλεια Ralph Rugoff (2015); “Hell As Pavillion”, επιµέλεια Νάντια Αργυροπούλου, Palais de Tokyo, Παρίσι (2013) και “Μονόδροµος” , 3η Μπιενάλε της Αθήνας, επιµέλεια Nicolas Bourriaud, Ξένια Καλπακτσόγλου και Poka Yio (2011). Ο Ανδρέας Λόλης διδάσκει στην Διεθνή Καλοκαιρινή Ακαδηµία Καλών Τέχνων του Σαλτσµπουργκ (2016-2018). Ο Ανδρέας Λόλης εκπροσωπείται από τη γκαλερί The Breeder, Athens.

THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com

!

THE BREEDER ANDREAS LOLIS: THE SCULPTURE WE DESERVE

By Ralph Rugoff We are relentlessly flooding our world with more and more things.

Thanks to technological advances, as well as the deregulation of international trade and the global spread of capitalism, our lives have become swept up in a tsunami of commodities. Cheap consumer objects, the bulk of them produced in Asian countries, fill our homes, while their packing materials dominate our landfills. This relentless proliferation of objects – which in part disguises the growing economic inequality that accompanies it – profoundly alters our capacity for relating to anything else. At the same time, our daily immersion in disparate channels of electronic media has created an apparent paradox of contemporary life: though we are surrounded by an ever-growing quantity of things, we seem to be less and less engaged with physical dimensions of experience.

This scenario, in which our relationship with objects is doubly devalued, poses a particular dilemma for contemporary sculpture. As a practice that involves making objects that sit in the world alongside other objects, it is the art form most sensitive, and vulnerable, to these changes in the cultural landscape. How does an artist making sculpture today respond to this state of affairs? Is it inherently absurd to try to do so by adding yet more objects to the world?1 In recent years Andreas Lolis has compellingly addressed these questions by drawing on traditional means and materials to make sculptures that explore and question the character of our contemporary situation. At once sensuous and engaged, quietly startling and deeply thoughtful, his work cannily exploits specific qualities of sculpture to redirect and reflect on its history as well as dilemmas of the present moment.

Over the past several years, Lolis has created a series of floor-based sculptures that scrupulously mimic the appearance of materials commonly used in the packing and shipping of commodities: cardboard boxes, polystyrene casings, and wooden pallets. Many of these sculptures feature signs of apparent wear-and-tear: the sides of a carton may seem to be partially crushed or stained, while a sheet of Styrofoam appears to have been chipped or broken. Reinforcing this overall impression, Lolis typically positions his sculptures across the gallery space in a manner that recalls the random scattering of refuse in the street. It is an image with which we are all too familiar: around the world, streets in cities and suburbs alike bear witness to a ceaseless tide of discarded packaging, the dismal aftermath of our endless consumption.

It is only on closely examining Lolis’s life-size objects that we realize – with an astonishment verging on disbelief – that they are not in fact found items, but are sculptures carved from marble. Stunned by this discovery, we are immediately struck with admiration for the masterful workmanship that has !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1!Many artists have sought to answer this question by developing

practices loosely defined as ‘social sculpture,’ but in truth, much of this work, which focuses on relationships with people and cultural institutions, assumes forms that are much more closely related to performance than to sculpture. !

THE BREEDER so effectively fooled our eyes. Lolis’s marble sculptures replicate the varied textures and surfaces of their subjects with eerie precision; indeed, they evince an obsessively meticulous attention to the material qualities of things.

But there is much more at stake here than the pleasure afforded by a display of technical virtuosity. It would also be a mistake to see this work as merely another aesthetic meditation upon common objects – a kind of povera Pop that seeks to elevate the ordinary. Instead, once our initial bewilderment and delight give way, Lolis’s art leads us in a very direction.

Upon our realizing that these familiar-looking objects are not lightweight constructions of cardboard and Polystyrene, but are in fact solid stone, they begin to evince a slightly uncanny presence and to generate unanticipated meanings. They assume an aura of weight, gravity and potential resistance that contradicts our customary associations with disposable packing materials. At the same time, because Lolis has so expertly simulated their surface appearance – down to a level of detail that we normally perceive only on a subliminal level – we cannot fully escape from the power of their trompe l’oeil illusion. We may feel compelled to touch these works to reassure ourselves of their actual material character, yet despite our empirical knowledge, our brain keeps responding to the visual image it receives (and which it immediately recognizes). Of course we know better, but we nevertheless experience an unsettling split in our perception, as if our ability to distinguish between artifice and reality has been momentarily suspended.

That uncertainty prompts us to look yet again, to scrutinize ever more closely the carved surfaces of Lolis’s sculptures and to note the dazzling verisimilitude with which they evoke the dents and creases of distressed carboard, or perfectly mimic the subtle range of tones found in a weathered wooden pallet. Our increased investment in this fastidious process of looking – which responds to and mirrors, in a way, the artist’s investment of meticulous labour – slows down our perceptual process. Even though we are examining types of objects that, in the ‘real’ world, we normally would not even notice, our observing takes on an unusually careful and caring quality.

As a result, we may develop a novel appreciation for the unsung aesthetic qualities of packing materials, but that is only a minor side effect of our exploration. What is more important here is how the work engineers our commitment to an engaged and sensuous mode of perception that is the exact opposite of the distracted and distanced modes of looking that characterise consumerist culture – a culture embodied, needless to say, in the kinds of packaging that Lolis has taken as his subject matter.

For Permanent Residence (2015), the artist’s most major work to date in this series, Lolis assembled numerous individually carved marble elements into an installation that resembles an improvised habitat made from cast-off cartons, pallets and Polystyrene sheets. Evoking the kind of temporary shelter and bedding that homeless members of society construct from cast-off detritus, Permanent Residence bears witness to the precariousness of our social and economic structures, and also to the resilience and vulnerability of the unseen architects and inhabitants of such ‘residences.’ In addition, Lolis’s installation serves as a fitting monument to the Greek financial crisis, and beyond that, to the bitter truth that most capitalist societies willingly treat a percentage of their own population as disposable trash, abandoning them to

THE BREEDER lives led outside the margins of the mainstream economy. The word ‘permanent’ in the title, besides striking a note of skepticism about any improvement in future social conditions, calls attention to the artist’s pointedly ironic decision to use marble – a classical material associated with enduring monuments – to represent the ephemeral waste used to construct a desperately impoverished emergency architecture. At the same time, it is significant that the different components of Lolis’s installation are not fixed in place; far from being ‘permanent’ in its form, his sculpture is ultimately adjustable. Its multiple parts can be reconfigured in response to specific aspects of different sites and exhibitions. This is a mobile monument, in other words, which shares a certain degree of flexibility and flux with the kind of precarious shelters to which it alludes.

In mixing up these references and associations, Permanent Residence provocatively raises questions about what we choose to value as a society with our monuments and our art; it articulates both a complex sculptural space and a space of public discourse. The work’s public-facing orientation is further conveyed through the inter-relationship of the installation’s many separate components. To some degree, they conjure a crowd of bodies. (The form of a box easily evokes a surrogate for the human body, itself a kind of package wrapped in skin and bone). Indeed, in its arrangement of disparate individual elements that range in scale as well as texture and tone, Permanent Residence brings to mind the complex formal tropes of traditional figurative sculptures that feature multiple bodies, such as the fountains of Bernini or the monuments of Canova. Like those kinds of works, Permanent Residence seems less focused on conveying an over-all sculptural whole than with highlighting the complex relationships of its parts. Its formal attitude thus seems married to an active sense of sociality, and a concern with the interconnections that exist between individual members and a larger social body.

Irony has been associated with trompe l’oeil sculpture ever since Jasper John made his Unpainted Bronze (Ale Cans) of 1960. As already mentioned, there is of course an inevitable irony in Lolis’s use of marble – given its associations with classical Greek art – as well as in his application of highly trained artisanal skills to the task of fashioning facsimiles of massproduced packing materials. This paradoxical endeavour – of producing likenesses of machine-made objects through painstaking hand-made fabrication – has also been developed since the late 1980s by a number of other contemporary artists making tromp l’oeil sculpture, including Robert Gober, and Peter Fischli and David Weiss. On one level, this kind of work enacts a strategic reversal of Marcel Duchamp’s sculptural ‘readymades’: whereas Duchamp took ordinary mass-manufactured objects and recontextualized them as art, these latter-day artists have re-introduced skilled craft practices to contemporary art in order to produce objects that only resemble machine-made things.

Unlike Duchamp’s art, which was principally concerned with questioning how we define ‘art’, this latter type of sculpture seems more directly related to the unstable slippage between fact and fiction that distinguishes so much of our cultural experience today, including our political and financial discourses. Against this background, the mischievous duplicity of trompe l’oeil sculpture reminds us that things are not always what they

THE BREEDER seem to be; in addition, it allows us to explore and interrogate our responses to the kinds of contradictory and uncertain representations that populate and describe our world.

It is worth noting here that most contemporary artists making trompe l’oeil sculpture do so by painting over a sculpture of some kind, often a bronze cast. This is a practice that sets itself, quite deliberately, in direct opposition to Modernism’s credo of ‘truth to materials.’ (Painting over a metal or stone sculpture was long considered an act of falsification by modernist ideologues, who demanded that sculpture should ‘truthfully’ reveal its actual material character). Lolis’s work, however, occupies a special position in this history: it presents a deceptive visual appearance yet at the same time plainly reveals the marble with which it is made. In a stroke of genius, Lolis has articulated an approach that marries these two opposing traditions, reconciling the divergent ideas and values that each attributes to ‘truth’ and ‘fiction.’

Most importantly, perhaps, Lolis has articulated a new way in which sculpture can address our cult of materialism – a cult in which much of the contemporary art world is ensconced – and the fallout of our consumerist societies. Through playing with and subverting our perceptual and conceptual assumptions, his work asserts that sculpture cannot be consumed like packaged goods; to the contrary, it engages us as collaborators, as it is only through the audience’s active looking and interpretation that the work’s meaning and social value can be realized. While embracing traditional craft, Lolis’s work ultimately frames sculpture as an arena in which our possible social relationships and subjectivities can be rehearsed and reinvented, and in which we might re-discover that the process of paying careful attention, especially to things that we normally overlook, is an act of profound ethical as well as aesthetic consequence.

Ralph Rugoff January 2016 Ralph Rugoff has been Director of the Hayward Gallery since 2006.

He recently curated the 2015 Lyon Biennale

Andreas Lolis, ARTFORUM, March 2016 vol.54 – no.7, Stephanie Bailey

THE BREEDER ANDREAS LOLIS UNDERCURRENTS Opening: 19 November 2015, 8.00pm-10.00pm Exhibition dates: 19 November 2015 – 19 December 2015 Opening times: Tuesday to Saturday 12-6pm Address: 45 Iasonos st, 10436, Athens Andreas Lolis’ (b. 1970) practice is imbued with the awareness of the cultural weight of a large inherited sculptural tradition but also the need of the artist to confront this tradition and deal with different sides of the current sociopolitical reality amidst the crisis.

The exhibition consists of two installations that are developed in parallel and in contrast to one another, around the conceptual dipole of surplus-deficit. The concept of liquidity incurs conceptually throughout the exhibition. Marble remains Lolis' favorite medium, which for the first time here is combined with clay, to support the increased narrative needs of this new body of work.

At the gallery’s ground floor, a thin piece of marble embedded onto the actual wall of the gallery is carved to resemble a weathered wall from extensive humidity, next to it sits an old fashion ladder made of brown marble, that resembles wood. The impression formed is that some kind of leakage or increased humidity has caused the damage on the wall and that human intervention is imminent or pending to restore it.

At the basement, covering the floor, dried and cracked clay resembles a dried water environment –river, lake, marsh...– where the only surviving element is a rhythmic and interrupted line of canes. These canes, carved meticulously out of marble, do not bloom, they move in limbo, deprived from the indispensable for their survival element, water.

These organic forms, allegories of life in precarity, are simultaneously natural obstacles, fences. The installation interacts and collaborates with the architectural elements of the space, the existing ones as well as the drain of the former industrial space of the gallery.

A common denominator in both installations is the liquid element, water, either through its abundant presence or through its absence. Water stands for the natural resources and the common goods, indispensable elements of life, that are however deprived from a big percentage of the world, threatening its survival. Through the poetic images that the artist creates, images of decline, decay and desertification, emerges his critical disposition against phenomena of late capitalism, like the irrational use and allocation of resources, accumulation, the different kinds of blockages and entrenchments, poverty, climate change...

Andreas Lolis’ previous body of work is characterized by his love for marble –a noble and characteristically Hellenic material– and his thematic dedication in perishable objects that are used to pack and transport consumer goods: crushed cardboard boxes, Styrofoam pieces and wooden pallets, scattered on the exhibition space as we would encounter them in a warehouse or at the side of the street. These marble dummies at first give the impression of found objects; yet when we examine them closely –or even touch them– we discover that they are trompe l’oeil sculptures, carved in marble to render with accuracy shapes, colors and textures. The pleasure evoked by the realistic details of the works is THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com

THE BREEDER undeniable. But impressing the viewer, surprising him, disorienting his cognitive function is not a goal in itself. Andreas Lolis is using his classical training and material to elevate elements of a low and worthless reality to the realm of the monumental and also to comment upon an inglorious aspect of the contemporary world: the characteristic to our consumer societies production and disposal of waste.

Already in these previous works we can trace the disposition for sociopolitical critique, which was especially sharpened with the more recent installation Permanent Residence (currently on view at the Lyon Biennial) inspired from the impromptu made shelters of homeless people on the streets. Cardboard boxes, pieces of Styrofoam and pallets were presented as the litter of one person that transforms into possessions of another person and composed an affectionate installation-tribute to the anonymous impromptu architecture of the urban margins and its invisible creators.

In this exhibition, Andreas Lolis for the first time is dealing with organic and random forms and not strictly with imitations of man made objects. The enrichment of his vocabulary with new elements serves his ever growing need to stand critically against today's sociopolitical reality and discuss different aspects of the crisis.

Dionyssia Stephanopoulou November 2015 Andreas Lolis (1970) has collaborated for projects and exhibitions with the distinguished curators including: by Ralph Rugoff (Director of Hayward Gallery, London), Nicolas Bourriaud (Director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris), Shamim Momin (Director and Curator at LAND, Los Angeles, co-curator of the 2004 and 2008 Whitney Biennale), Claire Lilly (director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park), Tom Eccles (Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College), Xenia Kalpaktsoglou (curator and co-founder of the Athens Biennial), Nadja Argyropoulou (curator, collaborator of DESTE Foundation). Currently his work is on view at the 13th Lyon Biennial “La Vie Moderne” that is curated by by Ralph Rugoff.

THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com

Andreas Lolis, In/Situ, curated by Shamim M. Momin, Chicago 2013.

!

!

THE BREEDER Introduction to the work of Andreas Lolis The immense cultural burden of classical Greece and the intrinsic need to deconstruct it in order to go on with life are relentless challenges of modern Greece and a major theme in its contemporary art world. This dichotic urge - the awareness of belonging to the greatest tradition of them all and the uttermost exigency to tear it apart – also runs heavily through Andreas Lolis body of works.

Born in 1970, Lolis is a classically trained sculptor with a predilection for the noblest and most Hellenic material of them all: marble. However, his figures, formed with the splendid stone, are not exactly apollonian depictions of beauty in the line of lets say a celebrative torso of Phidias or his scholars, but rather its unconditional negation. Lolis intends to show the margin of modern society, the dusty, dirty truth of globalization not its glories. His creations are inanimate objects, ready-made compositions embodying the most tangible excrement of present-day consumerism: litter.

He shows us unadorned waste, thrown away garbage, as one might see lying around on a run-down street corner of a major city. We see worn out cardboard boxes, wrinkled by the elements, marked and yellowed by time. Some of them are flattened as if they were the occasional sleeping place of a homeless person taking shelter for the night. The material seems still warm of his body, reeking of sweat, urine and dried up blood marks. Stripes of puffy polystyrene hover above the cardboard: the disposable shiny white surplus of the throwaway, mail-order society.

But as we take a deeper look, as we physically touch the objects situated in front of us, a cold shudder runs through our spine. Suddenly we get back to our senses, realizing that we have fallen victim to an optical illusion. What seems so remarkably real and warm turns out to be truly cold and false, sculpted ironically from the rock-hard past of antiquity. The cardboard is magisterially shaped out of Moroccan marble, resembling the worn-out colours of decay. The Styrofoam is made out of the classical Dionysus marble, pallid and pure like a post-industrialist trip on neo-classicism.

By ennobling human waste using with great craftsmanship a historically relevant and ideally eternal material, Lolis forces the viewer to confront oneself with the squalor, the evident and daily foulness our society produces but chooses to ignore and finally the ethereal, the vanity of beauty and the peculiar falseness of it all.

Damiano Femfert April 2012

THE BREEDER 21st century relics The environment suggests a storage room, an exhibition space, and the street. Strong compositions of variously sized cardboard boxes, bearing evidence of heavy use, pair up with damaged styrofoam packaging materials and lean casually against each other in clusters.

Favoring recognizable forms and materials whose use is evident yet detoured and relying on the objects’ ready-made readability –mainly those having to do with storage, transport and by reflection shelter– has become a hallmark of Andreas Lolis’ sculptural installations. Meticulously crafted to resemble the ‘originals’, his marble sculptures are located somewhere between a teasing simulacrum and an echo of the real thing. Lolis inverts ‘soft objects’ using marble to turn them into solid, rigid presences. Still very recognizable but no longer functional, his sculptures acquire a slowed-down, frozen-in quality that disavows utility and any expectation of mobility. They are cool and contained, graphically expansive and surprisingly monumental. Yet this is neither mere trompe l’oeil that can be verified by touch nor mere provocation as technical proficiency is always underplayed and his practice is stripped of irony and agitprop.

As much as these sculptures fulfill a certain appetite for visual pleasure and built-in surprise, once their material is acknowledged and the manifestation of gravity is exposed a perplexing reaction is created. The change is, conceptually, remarkably simple, yet the viewer’s response demonstrates a mild shock of cognitive disorientation. And while the conventions of viewing art and the weight of the works prohibit audiences from touching –let alone lifting– them that does not mean that the urge to do so has disappeared.

While Lolis’ work combines both rational and intuitive ways of seeing and provides ample sensorial stimulation it would be more accurate to say that his interest is not to create sufficient approximations or formal variations but to continue the exploration of objecthood from a perverse angle. His practice acts as a vehicle for the investigation of container and contained and essentially offers testaments to vacancy. Composed of both masses and void his marble battered boxes and crumpled wrappings suggest the possibility of containing anything, nothing, absence. This anastrophe of a familiar symbol results in an accurate articulation of emptiness, a serious study of that which is missing. At the same time, he is stripping the exhibition space down to its physical essence - an empty white box that holds various objects on a temporary basis.

THE BREEDER One

of

the

most

surprising

aspects

of

Lolis’

work

is

its

very

legibility

and

straightforwardness. There’s a sense of modesty and disarming representational candor which makes the work simultaneously contemporary and traditional. But what could be characterized as harmlessly conventional uncovers a sinister state of advanced degradation. Lolis draws our attention to objects past their expiration date; the dreck capitalism leaves in its wake but he does so not in a pessimistic or cynical manner. He succeeds in capturing the heat and precariousness during transition and crisis by leaking the real into the representational. Balancing between ‘waste’ and its crafted double Lolis’ distorts well-worn notions of evolution in humankind, society, art and heightens our sense of im-mobility.

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, April 2012 Curator, co-founder of Athens Biennial

Andreas Lolis, Frieze Art Fair, New York, catalogue   



Shown by The Breeder C25 Biography Born 1970 Lives in Athens Greek artist Lolis has shown solo shows at venues such as Münchner Künstlerhaus, Munich (2011); his forthcoming solo exhibition at The Breeder, Athens, will take place from November 2013. He was a recipient of the Edgardo Mannucci International Sculpture Award in 2008. His work was featured in the 3rd Athens Biennale (2011), and in group exhibitions at galleries and institutions such as the Skironio Museum, Athens (2010), and Melina Mercouri Cultural Centre, Athens (2009).

1 21st Century Relics (Composition in 9 Parts) (detail) 2012 Marble 46½ × 185 × 110¼" (118 × 470 × 280 cm) Courtesy of The Breeder and Private Collection

2

2 Untitled (detail) 2012 Marble 15 × 22 × 16⅞" (38 × 56 × 43 cm) Courtesy of The Breeder

Andreas Lolis Classical sculptural techniques and their use in creating reproductions of commonly discarded objects form the basis of Andreas Lolis’s practice. His deceptive sculptures at first appear to be the very things they are facsimiles of— discarded boxes and Styrofoam packing material—but on closer inspection reveal themselves to be carved from marble. The work 21st Century Relics (Composition in 9 Parts) (2012) sees various discarded objects—all rendered in marble—strewn across a lawn, while another untitled work from 2012 mimicking the characteristics of a cardboard box invites closer inspection.

Drawing connections between Classical Greek culture and Greece’s current financial crisis, Lolis invests irony in producing valuable objects in valueless forms. SC (Steven Cairns)

Andreas Lolis, Frieze Art Fair London 2012 Catalogue.      



Shown by The Breeder

1

Biography Born 1970 Lives in Athens Greek artist Lolis has been the subject of solo exhibitions at venues including Münchner Künstlerhaus, Munich (2011). He was a recipient of the Edgardo Mannucci International Sculpture Award in 2008.

His work was featured in the 3rd Athens Biennale (2011) and in group exhibitions at galleries and institutions such as the Skironio Museum, Athens (2010), and Melina Mercouri Cultural Centre, Athens (2009).

3

1 Untitled (detail) 2012 Dionysian marble 135 × 92 × 15 cm Courtesy of The Breeder 2 Untitled (detail) 2012 Moroccan marble 70 × 57 × 30 cm Courtesy of The Breeder

2

3 Untitled (detail) 2012 Moroccan marble 77 × 30× 17 cm Courtesy of The Breeder

Andreas Lolis Andreas Lolis’ choice of subject and materials contrasts the current economic crisis and widespread anti-austerity protests in Greece with the exalted sculptural traditions of Greco-Roman art. His trompe-l’oeil works made for the 3rd Athens Biennale (2011) were inspired by the repercussions of the Greek debt crisis as it unfolded in the city streets.

Lolis said, ‘When I saw people on the terraces sleeping in cartons [cardboard boxes], it only came to me as a natural thing to co-exist with this situation—not to record it.’ The ephemeral becomes monumental in his series of sculptures such as Untitled (2012), which appear to be made from discarded corrugated cardboard and polystyrene packaging but are carved meticulously from Moroccan and Dionysian marble.

(Sarah Lowndes) SL

Andreas Lolis/Frieze sculpture Park, Evening Standard, 11 October 2012.

Andreas Lolis, Frieze Sculpture Park 2012, YOOX.com

S3 Andreas Lolis 21st Century Relics (Composition in 7 parts) Sculpture info: Greek artist Andreas Lolis’ work for the Frieze Sculpture Park brings together his country’s ancient past and its contemporary economic crisis: marble, the stone closely associated with the masterpieces of Greco-Roman sculpture, is the material by which he represents the cardboard boxes and polystyrene used as shelter in Greek cities by the increasing number of homeless people. The trompe-l’oeil work is feat of technical skill from an artist classically trained in working marble, and it partly explores the burden of classical heritage – despite appearances, the antique world constructs the country’s present.

ANDREAS LOLIS, ARTFORUM, September 2015

! !

!

!

Andreas Lolis, The Art Newspaper, London Frieze Art Fair, October 2012

Andreas Lolis NOMAS MAGAZINE 1st ISSUE January 2014