Lito Kattou / Unknown Synergy
Curated by Mattia Giussani
May 27th 2019 – June 29th 2019
Tile Project Space
Via Garian, 64
20100 Milano
Italy
 |
|
Unknown Synergy, Installation View
|
 |
|
Unknown Synergy, Installation View
|
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body III, Aluminum, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 210x140 cm |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Flower III, Electroformed copper, dimensions variable |
 |
| Clockwise: Lito Kattou, Body II, Aluminum, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 205x151,3 cm; Body I, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 185x112 cm |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body II, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 205x151,3 cm |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Flower I, Electroformed copper, dimensions variable |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Flower, Aluminium and permanent ink, 140 x 68,5 cm |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Flower, Aluminium and permanent ink, 140 x 68,5 cm, detail |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body III, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 210x140 cm |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body III, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 210x140 cm, detail |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body III, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 210x140 cm, detail |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body II, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 205x151,3 cm |
 |
| Clockwise: Lito Kattou, Flower II, Electroformed copper, dimensions variable; Body II, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 205x151,3 cm, detail |
 |
| Clockwise: Lito Kattou, Flower II, Electroformed copper, dimensions variable, detail; Body II, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 205x151,3 cm, detail |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Flower III, Electroformed copper, dimensions variable, detail |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body II, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 205x151,3 cm, detail |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body II, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 205x151,3 cm, detail |
 |
| Lito Kattou, Body I, Aluminium, Electroformed copper and permanent ink, 185x112 cm |
Ph. by Elena Radice
Tile
Project Space presents Unknown Synergy, the
first Italian solo show
of Athens-based artist Lito Kattou.
The exhibition,
curated by London-based curator Mattia Giussani, will present a
new body of mixed media works by the artist. Kattou will come
up with a new approach of exploring the ideas and synergies surrounding the roles of human and non-human
agents, as well as which implications these relationships have on the
ecological transformation, adaptability and concerns.
Unknown Synergy
“Nature
is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the
rate
of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around
the
world now likely”. 1 This is the alarming
opening statement of a recent report
released
at the end of April 2019, from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an independent organism
created
by United Nations in 2012.
In
this new ecological world without nature2,
where conditions of species survival
on
planet Earth are deteriorating year by year, how is it possible to tackle and
analyse
the relationships between human and non-humans agents? Within the
contemporary
techno-capitalistic structure, in what terms should we discuss
humans
relationships with non-humans agents living in the same uncertain world?
As
the German Scholar Erich Hörl3 states, Ecology has
started to designate the
collaboration
of a multiplicity of human and nonhuman agents: “it is something like
the
cipher of a new thinking of togetherness and of a great cooperation of entities
and
forces, which has begun to be significant for contemporary thought.” (Hörl,
2017)
For
her first solo exhibition in Italy, Unknown Synergy, Lito
Kattou produced a new
series
of human-like sculptures of bodies shaped as a composition, an assembly
of
human, technological and natural parts that come together to form something
that
reminds a new form of environmental creatures. Looking at the artist’s series
of
work Body, the complexity of the shapes used in each of the three sculptures
is
striking. In these visibly digitally fabricated aluminium artworks, the
different
composing
elements are fluid and harmonic, interconnected to one another. A
flower-headed
upper part of a human body and legs with a stingray attached to
them,
commanded by a screen; a resembling like fish; a deconstructed human
figure
powered by a turbine motor. All of the sculptures have hand-painted drawings
or
acrylic paintings of sunsets and landscapes that are carried as equipment,
attributes,
adornments and abstract skills by the bodies.
The
influence and role of technology in these hybrid beings is visible in their
functioning,
and as expressed by theorist Luciana Parisi, “Ecology involves the
capacities
of the environment, defined in terms of a multiplicity of interlayered
milieus
or localities, to become generative of emergent forms and patterns”4 (Parisi,
2017).
These newly formed patterns are a typical example of what the Cypriot artist
is
trying to expose with her sculptures. Ecology, intended as a synergy of
different
organisms
and agencies, generating new types of figures and configurations,
something
that can be linked to and seen as a realization of what critical
posthumanist
Rosi Braidotti would see as a post-anthropocentric model that places
the
preservation of the “dynamic, self-organizing structure of life itself”5 (Braidotti,
2013).
It
is possible to say then that synergy has become the “principle of principles of
ecology”6 (Neyrat,
2017) that characterizes our contemporary condition. As a
consolidated
fact that nature doesn’t exist anymore as previously intended in
this
ecological condition, “everything makes itself over and over again, endlessly
constituting
and reconstituting itself, ceaselessly becoming” (Neyrat, 2017)7.
This
can
be recalled with the fragile Mediterranean dried milk thistles that the artist
uses.
In
this new version, the copper electroformed thistles can be interpreted in
different
meanings.
They can be used in an encounter, gifts to be given to other bodies, or
paying
tributes to bodies that are gone. Nature that repeats itself over and over
again,
carrying with it different values and uses.
Looking
at the artist’s work, it is clear how this (once) unknown synergy between
humans
and non-humans is fundamental, and how breaking these interconnections
is
not a viable option. The fragile equilibrium, and yet a connectiveness that
pervades
Kattou’s work, envisions and mirrors the key topics of debate regarding
ecological
worlds, showing how the separation between all the agencies that
populate
Earth would not be possible and how it would be counter-productive,
exposing
the very changes we’re dealing on a day to day basis, and envisioning what
the
future is holding for us.
Text
by Mattia Giussani
1 https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment
2
Morton, T. (2010) ‘The Ecological Thought’, Cambridge, United States: Harvard
University Press.
3
Hörl, E. (2017) ‘Introduction to general ecology - The ecologization of
thinking’, in Hörl, E. (ed.) General
Ecology,
The New Ecological Paradigm, London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury, p.3
4
Parisi, L. (2017) ‘Computational Logic and ecological rationality’, in Hörl, E.
(ed.) General Ecology, The
New
Ecological Paradigm, London: Bloomsbury, p.83.
5
Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity press,
p.60
6
Neyrat, F. (2017) ‘Elements for an Ecology of separation – Beyond ecological
constructivism’, in Hörl, E.
(ed.)
General Ecology, The New Ecological Paradigm, London, United Kingdom:
Bloomsbury, p.101
7
Neyrat, F. (2017) ‘Elements for an Ecology of separation – Beyond ecological
constructivism’, in Hörl, E.
(ed.)
General Ecology, The New Ecological Paradigm, London, United Kingdom:
Bloomsbury, p.104
BIO
Lito Kattou, born in Nicosia,
Cyprus 1990, is a visual artist based in Athens. She is a graduate of the Royal
College
of Art in London with an MA in Sculpture and the
Athens School of Fine Arts. Kattou is the winner of the Ducato
Prize 2019, recipient of the New Positions Award
for Art Cologne 2018 and she was the invited artist for the 89plus
Google Residency curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
and Simon Castets at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, 2017.
She has presented her work in solo shows at the
Artothek, Cologne; Polansky Gallery, Prague; Benaki Museum,
Athens; ROOM E1027, Berlin; Point Centre for
Contemporary Art, Nicosia; Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens;
Clearview.ltd, London; Pierre Poumet, Bordeaux;
Radical Reading, Athens and in various group shows at art
spaces, galleries and museums including
Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin;
Changing Room, London; Foothold, Bari; Komplot,
Brussels; Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis; Benaki Museum
and Deste Foundation, Athens. Her works are
included in prominent international and private collections as the
Dakis Joannou Collection, the collection of the
National Bank of Greece, the collection of Deutsche Telekom.
Mattia Giussani is an artist,
curator and editor based in London. After graduating in BA Photography at
Camberwell College of Arts in 2015, he graduated
in MFA Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2017. His
research has strong interest in the relationship
between digital technologies, social changes and the response of
art to these challenges. Recently he’s
researching within the Posthuman field, and using it as a navigation tool
within
different theories, especially in relation
between art, computational culture, technology and new media. Recent
artistic and curatorial projects include Heedful
Sight at Like a Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare, Nov 2018, IT);
Future Fictions at Assembly Point (London, Sep
2017, UK); Non Standard at T-Space (Milan, June 2017, IT); We are
having a great time :) at Rockelmann &
(Berlin, 2016, DE); 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering Revisited 1966/2016
at Arts Catalyst (London, UK, 2016); Into The
Fold at Camberwell College of Arts (London, UK, 2016);