Air
Iris Touliatou
happiness
HAPPINESS Architectural space unfolds, bends and climaxes as a pillar carrying Iris Touliatou’s happiness (to Laurie, vol. iv), 2018-2022, barely touches the ceiling, edging the spectator’s gaze. Happiness rashes out of our recent era, our mailboxes, virtual ethics and rhetorics; it “can only be installed as an ephemeral attempt,” to quote the artist herself. A small screen ruminates on an array of textual imports, linked to the inbox of an email account constantly accumulating unread advertisements, job alerts, travel promotions, subscriber memos, reach outs and follow ups. A collection of formless data functioning as air, as the thin gaze of the material world; the invisible or etheric substance that surrounds all.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY Iris Touliatou (b. 1981, Athens, Greece) works across various disciplines that are necessary for each intervention. Examining infrastructures and function, attachment and desires, the public and private, she creates forms and shared experiences that comment on labor, affective economies, states of being and respond to the conditions of artistic production and institutional frames within which it exists. Through subtle redistributions of objects, systems, economies, human relationships and production processes, maintenance and repairs, her practice contours the structures of our contemporary condition. She lives and works in Athens, Greece.
Her solo exhibitions include: Before and after science, NEON, Athens (2024); Outfits, Peer, London (2023); low theory, fluent, Santander (2023); GIFT, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2023); mothers, Rodeo, London and Piraeus (2022); appendage, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2022); Group exhibitions include: Key Operators, Kunstverein Munchen, Munich (2024); It would storm, Galerie Neu, Berlin (2024); Phenomenon, Anafi (2024); Intimate confession is a project, Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, Houston (2023); forms of the surrounding futures, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Göteborg (2023); This Current Between Us, PPC Historic Steam Electric Power Station of Neo Faliro, Piraeus (2022); SIREN (some poetics), Amant, New York (2022); Work and Leisure, Sala Impasti, Milan (2022); ανάβασις*, Rodeo, Piraeus (2022); Soft Water Hard Stone, New Museum Triennial, New York (2021); Eclipse AB 7 Athens Biennale (2021); Anti Structure, Deste Foundation, Athens (2021); Interval, Goethe Institut, Athens (2021); The way In, Haus N, Athens (2021); The Same River Twice, New Museum / Deste Foundation, Benaki Museum, Athens (2019).
ΚΟΜΠΑΣ / KOMPASS Part of the ZHdK Department of Fine Arts, ΚΟΜΠΑΣ / Kompass (Elena Barba and Moselle Kleiner) is a curatorial initiative for approaching contemporary exhibition-making with a poetics of levity and rhythm. The Kompass programme at Dienerstrasse 33 includes five presentations focusing on ancient elements: Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Metal, considered from diverse vantage points. The programme examines seasonal lifecycles and the essential interconnectedness of all things.
Air • Iris Touliatou: happiness
16.10 — 17. 11. 2024
Vernissage / Wednesday 16 October, 6—9 PM / Dienerstrasse 33, Zurich CH 8004
For any inquiries, please contact
kompassspace@gmail.com /
@kompassspace