NEW Hotel is launching a series of art installations at the Art Lounge restaurant on the 7th floor and various other selected areas of the hotel under the general title Contemporary Artists at New Museum Hotel in Athens. The aim of the program is to promote contemporary artistic creation, combining it with the continuous and unpredictable reshaping of certain spaces within the hotel.
The first event of the program is titled Forever is composed of Nows / Το Για Πάντα αποτελείται από Πολλά Τώρα and includes works by artists Petros Moris and Malvina Panagiotidi.
The artworks of Petros Moris and Malvina Panagiotidi are installed at the Reception and Art Lounge of NEW Hotel, creating microcosms within the changing worlds of the hotel: Beneath the smooth and shiny surfaces, mythological creatures seem ready to awaken, fine tangled threads meander across the walls, scattered echoes are trapped on shelves of time, archaeological fragments disrupt the hallways. Petros Moris’s sculptures emerge as a composition of archaic memories, geological matter, and otherworldly artifacts. His anatomical diptych “Vein I and II,” “Times Circle,” and “Future Bestiary (Sphinx)” evoke an irrational and repressed aspect of antiquity. At the heart of this artistic practice lies the metaphor of the underground space—the realm of entropy, deep time, and traces of a world of bodily and spiritual anatomies. This materialized imagination is linked to social and environmental transformations, bringing to the surface the chthonic roots of what is called the Past and what is called the Future.
Malvina Panagiotidi’s sculptures revive the spider as a symbol and bearer of broader systems of perception and recreation of the world (“My candle burned alone in an immense valley”). An oversized web traps anthropomorphic prey and becomes a reservoir of narratives. The lifeless sculptures scattered on the shelves of the Art Lounge draw from the witch Erictho, who, as described by the Roman poet Lucan, sought to recreate life from the lifeless limbs of the human body (“More answers without questions” and other works). These fragmented limbs form a new body, recalling images of archaeological excavations. In contrast to the ancient witch Erictho, they attempt a reversal: Instead of providing answers, they raise questions about the Now: Forever is composed of Nows.
Curated by: Maria Kasimati-Tsoutsia
September – December 2024
NEW Hotel
16 Filellinon St., 10557
+30 210 3273000
