Renwick Gallery is pleased to present Adventures Are Dead My Dears, an exhibition of new works by George Kontos. This is Kontos' second exhibition at Renwick Gallery.
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. Kontos blurs these lines be generating a constant stream of treatments and proposals; no one action or image predates another, each serves as an indication of simultaneous non-achievement and distant completion to an elusive main event.
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. His work has been exhibited in the Thessaloniki Biennial (2009), SLAB-Art 210 in Los Angeles (2008), Monte Vista in Los Angeles (2007), D301 Gallery at CalArts (2005), Event Gallery, London (2006), The Zoo Art Fair, London (2006), Enjoy Gallery, New Zealand (2006), REDCAT, Los Angeles, (2005), and the Los Angeles Design Center (2005).
For further information, please contact the gallery at info@renwickgallery.com or 212.609.3535.