Apparère

On April 1 2011 at 7:00 pm the Greek artist Yorgos Sapountzis will present Apparère, a project he developed during his residency at Fondazione Morra Greco. Apparère consists of an installation and a performance, which will be shown at 8:00 pm. The performance is the result of a workshop that Sapountzis gave to a group of students* from the Naples Academy of Fine Arts in the premises of the Foundation.

The site-specific installation Apparère, on display in the basement of Palazzo Caracciolo di Avellino, explores the moment when bodies and things reveal themselves. It consists of twelve exhibition structures, covered with fabrics in primary colours. The lighting is provided by three gas lamps. The structures are similar to those commonly found in street markets and city streets, but Sapountzis changed the proportions, reproducing those of the human body in twelve different positions. The exhibition space becomes a market-place, a theatre, a place where you wait for something to be presented, represented or revealed. The same space is also occupied by sculptures made with metal tubes, cloths and food containers. These figures create a new dimension of  the space, trying to get in touch with men’s desire for products and their need to project and reflect themselves. Moreover, the performance explores the way the body appears in the public space and how it is used, as well as the way individuals share and interact with each other in order to get mutual satisfaction.

Yorgos Sapountzis’s practice combines different media, analyses the role of sculpture, the structure of public spaces, the relationship between our body, the vision and the space.
The tension between order and disorder is central to his work. Chaos is a method, the process that makes possible surprises and chance encounters which would not occur in a field of action with set boundaries. The installations and the performances, suspended between the confusion of the creative moment and the formalization of a new order, celebrate the coincidences of improvisation. The space in which they are set is hard to define, as it is liminal, hybrid and open. Sapountzis’s practice touches theatre, poetry and some forms of rituality.

* Gennaro Schiano, Paola Raimondo, Francesca Mozzillo, Marino Sasso, Efthalia Kerouli, Chiara Giandomenico, Pasquale Aapuca, Viola Basile, Tommaso Caruso, Paolo Incarnato. We thank Prof. Pasquale Pennacchio for the precious collaboration.

All images Courtesy Fondazione Morra Greco, Napoli
© Danilo Donzelli