CPS Presentation...Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis

Born in Greece, 1936, contemporary artist Jannis Kounellis makes works involving sculpture, installation and performance. Studying art in Athens, his early works concentrated on the street signs and notices which he used as inspiration to produce canvas based paintings full of composition with stencilled letters and shapes painted in household paints. Taking inspiration from alternative artists such as Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana he started to create works away from what was expected at the time.

1967-1972 saw a group of artists create the Arte povera (Poor Art) movement and start to oppose the ideas of governments in european cities, through their artworks. Using non traditional found materials this group produced works in a way that radically contradicted the idea of normal art, i.e. painting. The pieces were all structured installations or sculptures and were built in spaces with materials recovered from industrial heritage and their countries history. The group strived to show art could be made from anything and everything echoing back to the works of Duchamp.

Kounellis works in a range of different mediums including paint, sculpture, installation and performance but always has the same heritage filed images in his mind. He looks into traditional ways of life, labour, pain, and work life, and contrasts it with visions of modern urban life that he witnesses happening around him.  

He takes simple finds and turns them into nostalgic displays of history and uses the gallery space as a canvas to create his installed paintings quoting "Art should be replaced by life itself". 

Rows of coats hung on pegs and tangled in barbed wire become symbols for a lost workforce represented as prisoners of their work place and the struggles that tied their lives up. 

Each piece is strong, dark and overall quite powerful in their presentation. 

His most famous piece involved a group of horses tied to the gallery walls for 12 days. He did this to represent the horses used in old traditional paintings and by doing this he brings the landscape into the gallery or turns the gallery into the landscape. I think he kept them tethered to highlight the fact that in traditional paintings the horses can't move either. 

I think the piece was all about the experience and impact and the effect it has on the viewer. 

Was it cruel? I'm guessing the horses possibly had the best 12 days of their lives so possibly not. 

The whole situation must have been constantly changing depending on the group of gallery visitors.

"When I made the pile of coal piece it created a presence for the viewer. The coal can be bought anywhere by anyone, therefore the preciousness is not in the object but actually in the gesture of placing the coal inside the space". Kounellis makes an image by placing the real world in front of us but in a way that presents it as an art work, the thing he presents becomes the art and the emotion it generates in the viewer becomes the experience. 

Looking into one of his works we see a lot of representation. 

The steel canvas - industry/workplace/hardship.

The shoes - the people working/people who died in the workplace?

The coat tied to the bed - the struggle of the working man/woman, tied to the same life forever and the same job, only ever being able to afford the single bed even though they might have a partner in it too. 

Each piece asks questions and tells us about particular histories.

I see Kounellis as a story teller using labour intensive, history filled materials to produce images filled with his and his birthplaces heritage.