Objecthood 00
The Rethymnon Centre of Contemporary Art - "L. Kanakakis" Municipal Gallery (now the Contemporary Art Museum of Crete) inaugurated the exhibition Objecthood 00: New Acquisitions of the Object on Saturday, December 11, 1999, at the Artillery Hall in Fortezza. This exhibition had already been successfully organized and presented in Athens by the Hellenic American Union.
Objecthood 00 (as its title suggests) aimed to explore the boundaries between art and design. Through their work, many contemporary Greek and international artists sought to redefine the relationship between humans and objects, examining—decades after Marcel Duchamp’s revolutionary ideas and within the context of the post-industrial, digital evolution of the object—its new functionality.
The works featured in the exhibition offered starting points, allegories, contexts, ideas, and visions for a future "poetic inhabitation" of the world. Meanwhile, advertising, mass media and popular culture continue to promote an idealized version of post-functionality. At the same time, cinema (e.g., Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati) and critical essays (e.g., Jean Baudrillard) have demonstrated that in the face of the hyper-functionality of objects, humans themselves often become dysfunctional and irrational.
The exhibition featured works -new and in most cases created for this specific subject- by Liam Gillick, Jim Isermann, Jorge Pardo, Joe Scanlan, Dimitra Vamiali, Sofia Vamiali, Dimitris Kozaris, Miltos Manetas, Antonis Michaelides, Maria Papadimitriou, Alexandros Psychoulis, and, as a guest, the Chelsea World group, with its homonymous interactive Internet project.
Chelsea, the City of Contemporary Art and Architecture, is located within the virtual world of Active Worlds. This digitally constructed city is rapidly growing, with new buildings and spaces dedicated to the arts.
Its residents include contemporary art institutes, institutions, galleries, and offices for art professionals exploring this medium. Additionally, numerous artists maintain their own spaces in Chelsea.
Since 1998, Chelsea has been showcased in Europe, the United States and at Arco '99 in Madrid. Upcoming exhibitions include Project Room in Chicago and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Germany.
Most of the works in the exhibition were constructed based on the artists' designs by the companies “TO EPIPLO” and “NEFELI Ltd”. Several of the participating international artists attended the opening, supported by the Cultural Office of the American Embassy.
The exhibition and the accompanying bilingual catalogue, featuring extensive photographic material of the artists' works, were curated by (in alphabetical order): Nandja Argyropoulou, Art Historian and Director of Cultural Affairs; Dimitra Vamiali, curator and artist; Sofia Vamiali, designer; and Yiorgos Tzirtzilakis, architect and theorist. The catalogue also included a text by Stergios Delialis, founder and Director of the Thessaloniki Design Museum.
The exhibition remained open to the public until January 15, 2000.
