Jannis Kounellis

Coats, chairs: everything at Kounellis refers to Man, the epicentre and measure of everything. Steel plates? They have the standard format of a mesh base. Often suspended, the objects underline the force of gravity linking man to the earth. Swords of Damocles, kitchen tools or weapons of crime, knives evoke the tragically daily violence of existence. Symbol of controlled fire and the industrial revolution, coal refers to humanity. The coats tied to each other? To solidarity.

In this great reader of Greek tragedies, objects and materials have a political meaning. Linked to history and memory, Kounellis' art remains marked by war - just like Samuel Beckett's theatre, from which he draws inspiration. Gas bottles projecting fire, smoke associated with fragments of classical sculptures, walled doors, bells covered with shrouds... The artist expressed the disruption, the passage of time, the mystery of existence. Death... but also reconstruction. Without explanations and often without titles, he continued to confront us with the purity (and crudeness) of his presentations, which he constantly renewed. It is up to us to digest them, and to meditate on our place in the world...