Background
Athanasios Argianas was born in 1976 in Athens, Greece.
Athanasios Argianas was born in 1976 in Athens, Greece.
He received his Master of Arts from Goldsmiths College, London and previously studied under Jannis Kounellis at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Argianas" practice is interdisciplinary. Incorporating sculpture, painting, text, performance and often music or sound, and concerns itself with metaphorical or translated representations of aural experiences. In addition to his fine arts education and practice, Argianas is a conservatory trained musician and releases music under the moniker Gavouna.
In his work, Argianas has been known to reference electronic instruments from the early 20th century, such as the theremin and the ondes martenot, experimental music and compositional methods from the 1960s, concrete poetry, the Constructivism of Naum Gabo, and even Marcel Duchamp’s Machine Optique (1920) and its circular deployment of language.
Argianas" work explores the contingency of sounds and forms and the possibility of new or different understanding arising through the translation between aural and material experiences. He oscillates between employing standardized systems for converting sound to object in some works and allowing for more intuitive translation in others
His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, The Serpentine Gallery, London and a participation in Performa 13 in New New York 2014: Silence Breakers, Silence Shapers, Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2014: A Sequencer**, Aanant & Zoo, Berlin, Germany
2013: A Sequencer*, On Stellar Rays, New York, New York, United States of America
2011: Laid Long, Spun Thin, Max Wigram Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2011: The Length of Your Arms Unfolded, Performance and Installation, The Barbican Art Gallery, The Barbican Center, London, United Kingdom
2010: Art Nova, Art Basel Miami (with Pavel Büchler), Florida, United States of America
2010: The Length of a Strand of Your Hair, of the Width of Your Arms, Unfolded, EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece
2008: We All Turn This Way, Park Nights, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (with Nick Laessing), The Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2014: Art of Its Own Making, The Pulitzer Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri, United States of America
2014: Art or Sound, Fondazione Prada - Ca Corner Della Regina, Venice, Italy
2013: Performa 13, Biennial, New York, New York, United States of America
2013: In the Studio, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens, Greece
2012: The Imminence of Poetics, Curated by Luis Perez-Oramas, The 30th Sao Paulo Biennale, Sao Paulo, Brazil
2012: Coquilles Mécaniques, Cracalsace, Centre Rhénan d’Art Contemporain, Altkirch, France
2012: Sonic Time Speech / Sound / Silence From the EMST Collection, curated bz Anna Kafetsi, EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece
2011: A Rock and a Hard Place, 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece
2011: Art Now Live 2011, Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom
2010/11: Recent British Sculpture, Curated by Tom Morton, Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2007: Pale Carnage, Curated by Martin Clark, Arnolfini, Bristol, United Kingdom (touring to Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, United Kingdom).
