Opening L'Avancée / Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos
His practice develops around a preferred object, which he adapts according to context and purpose: the bed. Conceived as places, his works are invitations for collaboration on the one hand, and to a structural experience on the other. The bed is not a theme, but a format on which ideas, forms, and bodies rest. Konstantinos' approach takes the form of a welcoming proposition: while he creates the conditions and context for others to inhabit his pieces, he does not expect results. In contrast to a solitary practice and an individualistic stance, Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos invites other artists to exchange, collaborate, and find alternative tools and ways of thinking for doing things together. Instead of the result, the lived moment is the work’s priority.
For l'Avancée, he returns to these many experiences of cocreation with a sculpture, made this time alone, but addressed to all the people he has previously invited. Retrospective Constellations consists of a central starshaped metal structure, to which twenty-three 3D-printed night-lights are connected. Each nightlight is conceived as an acknowledgment, an elliptical object that suggests a kind of archive of shared moments, a symbolic trace of discussions, and a formal residue of co-created works.
Although printed and potentially reproduceable, close to the concept of artwork multiples, they are each specifically intended for a previous collaborator. Over the course of the exhibition, these people will be able to pick up their destined night-lights and leave with them, scattering them into shattered luminous constellation. The installation responds to the context in which it is presented, while at the same time questioning the notion of ownership. At the end of the exhibition, only the metal sculpture will remain, recalling the structural posture that Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos adopts in each collaboration.
Located in the heart of the Pernod Ricard Foundation's café-bookshop, L'Avancée is a wall dedicated to emerging artists and a way of extending the exhibition space into the living space. In association with the École des Beaux-arts de Paris and the 'métiers de l'exposition' programme, from October to July 2023, an artist will be invited to occupy the wall for two months. Each inauguration is an opportunity for a close exchange between the emerging artist and the public. Each artist will receive customised professional and critical support. With this initiative, the Pernod Ricard Foundation is continuing to strengthen its commitment to the young art scene in France.
