Athanasios Kanakis works from unusual objects, situations, or spaces, which he documents, explores in depth, and then reduces into the form of installations. Interested in artistic expression outside of art, he develops a connection with anecdotal and strongly metaphoric sites. The objects and spaces documented are vanishing points for a fiction constructed as a minimalist path. From the anecdote, a space is created through objects studied as perceptible materials. Thus, the experience of place is always related to a certain physical and emotional reality that the spectator may freely interpret. Kanakis takes inspiration from the place to produce a fragile, contemplative architectural environment. His deployment is obsessive, exploded, and paradoxically contained. The installation therefore organizes anecdote so that a new and immersive place is discovered. In fact, the symbolic translation performed by the artist reveals a scenic vocabulary that is coherent and constantly developing. Random observations thus serve to monumentalize the site and how it is experienced. Kanakis emphasizes that faults and ruptures in the daily space are doors open to a meaning to be constructed. This intuitive process takes shape in a homogeneous and inspired approach, itself consolidated by ephemeral installations.
by Dominique Sirois-Rouleau
Dominique Sirois-Rouleau is a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratoire de recherche en esthétique de l’UQTR and a lecturer in art history at UQAM and the Université de Sherbrooke. As an independent curator and critic, her research focuses on the ontology of contemporary work and the notion of the object in current artistic practices. She has participated in various international colloquia such as those of CIHA, AAUC-UAAC and Acfas. Her observations on discourses and emerging arts have also been the subject of chapters in the books Art et politique (PUQ, 2011), Les plaisirs et les jours (PUQ, 2013), as well as in various catalogs and journals.