NYAB Event - George Kontos "Adventures Are Dead My Dears"

This event has ended.
At Renwick Gallery
Media: Drawing, Sculpture, Film

In the first of two films, The Vision portrays a motorcyclist riding along an abandoned stretch of the Greek National Highway, a public bridge project left incomplete. The rider views impossible vantages, and explores the boundaries of his territory and waterfront terrain. Kontos uses his main character to do the work of protagonist, producer, scout and viewer, in a film that may have already or may never materialize. The second film, What Was Done, further fragments and distorts possible plausible explanations. Here we see various detritus and weathered objects including film reels, scouting reports, and props, depicted in a common anthropological film style. The fluidity of time is particularly enhanced in this and the sculptural objects and drawings.

The sculpture, set atop a mirrored pedestal, which absorbs the surrounding works into it's field, has the anti-veneer and markings of a recently rediscovered archeological artifact from the not too distant future. Each object incorporates modern technologies, yet they are well worn. The drawings feature carefully precise renderings of utopian design motifs, images of disasters, and registration marks in the form of movie posters and storyboards.

The normal sequences which establish order between a script and a film, a sketch and a sculpture, an abandoned set prop and its eventual rediscovery are conflated. Fictions, proposals, treatments and visions are the motives and materials of Kontos' art. George Kontos was born in Trikala, Greece, and he currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Originally trained as an architect at the Artistotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, he went on to receive his MFA from CalArts in 2005.

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