Konstantin Kakanias

Last updated

Konstantin Kakanias (born September 18, 1961 in Athens) is a contemporary Greek painter and multimedia artist. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and Greece. Throughout his career Kakanias has created drawings, paintings, sculptures, performances, ceramics and books.

Contents

Kakanias' work does not belong to any single style. He is known to explore a range of themes in his work from the light and comic to the dark and psychological [1]

Career

Kakanias attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, majoring in Textile Design, from 1977-1979. Kakanias moved to Paris in 1979. He attended the Studio Berçot where he studied Fashion and Art. He was also taught by the Italian artist and stage designer Lila de Nobili. Kakanias started his career at 22, working as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines such as French Vogue and Vogue Italia. He created textile designs for Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix.

1984, Kakanias moved to Luxor, Egypt to study Ancient Egyptian art and remained there for a year. His art has been influenced by this experience. "Echoes of pharaohs and hieroglyphs reverberate in many of Kakanias' drawings today." [2]

New York

In 1988, Kakanias moved back to New York City where he collaborated with Tiffany and Barneys New York. His drawings were published by The New York Times and Vanity Fair. In 1991 he dedicated himself completely to making art. In 1995 he had a breakthrough exhibition "No More Stains" at the Postmasters Gallery in New York with sculptures and a performance. [3]

In 1996 Kakanias introduced his fictional heroine Mrs.Tependris for an illustrated New York Times Magazine article. Mrs. Tependris, Kakanias' "alter-ego," is a caricature of an art collector [4] and a high society doyenne [5] who Kakanias uses as "a metaphor for the state of contemporary art and its superficial reception by the public". [6] Mrs. Tependris has become a cult figure [7] in the art community. In 1997 he created his first book Freedom or Death based on the adventures of Mrs. Tependris.

Los Angeles

Kakanias moved to Los Angeles in 1997. For several years he continued working on the adventures of Mrs. Tependris and in 2002 published Mrs. Tependris: the Contemporary Years. In 2004 Kakanias was commissioned by the Greek Ministry of Culture to create a book for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Kakanias has exhibited around the world in museums and galleries, notably "Time Goes By So Slowly" at the Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art in 2006 and "A Tribute to Antonis Benakis" at the Benaki Museum in 2004-5. In 2008 he collaborated with Diane von Fürstenberg to create the comic book Be The Wonder Woman You Can Be. (DC Comics 2008). He has done numerous private commissions. In 2004 Kakanias frescoed a church in Spain for Carolina Herrera Jr.

Publications

Exhibitions

Related Research Articles

Penelope Delta Greek childrens writer

Penelope Delta was a Greek author. She is widely celebrated for her contributions to the field of children's literature. Her historical novels have been widely read and have influenced popular modern Greek perceptions of national identity and history. Through her long-time association with Ion Dragoumis, Delta was thrust into the middle of turbulent early-20th-century Greek politics, ranging from the Macedonian Struggle to the National Schism.

Benaki Museum

The Benaki Museum, established and endowed in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis, is housed in the Benakis family mansion in downtown Athens, Greece. The museum houses Greek works of art from the prehistorical to the modern times, an extensive collection of Asian art, hosts periodic exhibitions and maintains a state-of-the-art restoration and conservation workshop. Although the museum initially housed a collection that included Islamic art, Chinese porcelain and exhibits on toys, its 2000 re-opening led to the creation of satellite museums that focused on specific collections, allowing the main museum to focus on Greek culture over the span of the country's history.

Dakis Joannou is a Greek Cypriot industrialist and art collector. He is considered to be one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in the world and is famous for acquisitions such as the Jeff Koons-designed yacht 'Guilty'.

<i>Kathimerini</i> Greek newspaper

I Kathimerini is a daily, political and financial morning newspaper published in Athens. Its first edition was printed on September 15, 1919. It is published in the Greek language, as well as in an abridged English-language edition. Kathimerini traditionally supports the New Democracy party.

John Stathatos, Greek photographer and writer.

The Athens Conservatoire is the oldest educational institution for the performing arts in modern Greece. It was founded in 1871 by the non-profit organization "Music and Drama Association".

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, also known as Niko Ghika, was a leading Greek painter, sculptor, engraver, writer and academic. He was a founding member of the Association of Greek Art Critics, AICA-Hellas, International Association of Art Critics.

Rita Ackermann is a Hungarian-American artist. She is currently living and working in New York City.

Deste Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art is an arts foundation in Nea Ionia, a northern suburb of Athens, Greece. Housing the art collection of Greek businessman Dakis Joannou, it organizes exhibitions with the collection and commissions new work by emerging and established international contemporary artists.

Metaxourgeio Neighborhood in Athens, Attica, Greece

Metaxourgeio or Metaxourgio, meaning 'silk mill', is a neighbourhood of Athens, Greece. The neighbourhood is located north of the historical centre of Athens, between Kolonos to the east and Kerameikos to the west, and north of Gazi. Metaxourgeio is frequently described as a transition neighbourhood. After a long period of abandonment in the late 20th century, the area is acquiring a reputation as an artistic and fashionable neighbourhood due to the opening of many art galleries, museums, and trendy restaurants and cafes. Moreover, local efforts to beautify and invigorate the neighbourhood have reinforced a budding sense of community and artistic expression. Anonymous art pieces containing quotes and sayings in both English and Ancient Greek have begun springing up throughout the neighbourhood, containing statements such as "Art for art's sake". Guerrilla gardening has also helped to beautify this area, taking advantage of the ample sunshine in Greece. The heart of the neighborhood is Avdi Square, which draws residents and visitors with its open space, greenery, periodic festivals and gatherings, and adjacent restaurants, theatres and art gallery.

Lina Stergiou is an architect, cultural researcher, writer and curator, and associate professor who uses multiple formats spatial politics and the avant-garde, actively practiced and presented in conferences and symposia, and as essays and chapters to books, receiving the Princeton University Stanley J. Seeger Research Fellowship, 13 research grants and 2 research prizes, 7 teaching prizes and 11 design prizes.

Marina Karella Greek artist

Marina Karella is a Greek artist and the wife of Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark.

Yorgos Kypris

Yorgos Kypris, born 1954, is a Cypriot sculptor who lives and works between Athens and Santorini in Greece. He continues to take part in numerous solo and group exhibitions, commissions work, designs jewelry and permanently exhibits his work through MATI, his personal art gallery. His work has been published in a number of books, articles and magazines. His best known works include the "Entrapped Fish" installation, at the Lobby of the World Bank Building, Washington D.C., commissioned in 1997, the "Gate of Knowledge" - a sculptural steel gate, erected in 1998 in the yard of St. Paul High school, Pafos, Cyprus, the body of works "Fish" (1993-), the "Parallel Notions" body of works (2001) and the "Observers", an installation of four sited figures on poles, 4,5m high each, commissioned (2002) at Fabrica Commercial Center, Fira, Santorini, Greece.

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens Museum of contemporary art in Athens, Greece

The National Museum of Contemporary Art, established in October 2000, is the sole national institution focused only on collecting and exhibiting contemporary Greek and international art in Athens. Anna Kafetsi, Ph.D in Aesthetics- Art History and former curator for 17 years of the 20th century collection at the National Gallery of Athens, was appointed founding director of EMST.

Dimitris Yeros

Dimitris Yeros (1948) is a Greek artist-photographer.

Thomas Chimes

Thomas Chimes (1921–2009) was an influential painter and artist from Philadelphia. His work is in important public collections, including those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, among others.

Nikos Alexiou was a Greek artist who specialized in visual art, contemporary art, installation art and set design for theatre and dance. He exhibited his work at personal exhibitions and group events both in Greece and abroad.

Tassos Mantzavinos is a Greek painter who graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited in many museums and galleries in Greece and abroad and he has also worked on various book illustrations.

Pavlos Samios was a Greek painter and professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Sozita Goudouna is a curator, professor and the author of Beckett's Breath: Anti-theatricality and the Visual Arts on Samuel Beckett's Breath, one of the shortest plays ever written for the theatre, published by Edinburgh University Press and released in the US by Oxford University Press. According to William Hutchings' review at the Comparative Drama Conference Series 15, Goudouna's book is surely the most ever said about the least in the entire history of literary criticism.

References

  1. Francois Jonquet " La foret ou nous pleurons" 2008
  2. Nathan Cooper "Konstantin's empire" C magazine , April 2006
  3. David Rimanelli, “Ars Immaculata.” Going On About Town. The New Yorker, May 22, 1995
  4. Gavin Lambert, Introduction for the book Mrs. Tependris … just before the Olympics , published by the Greek Ministry of Culture , 2004
  5. Hamish Bowles, Introduction for the book Her Contemporary Years Rizzoli International 2002
  6. Alexandra Koroxenidis, “Putting oneself in the picture: The life of a fictional art collector“ Kathimerini-International Herald Tribune English edition, May 20, 2002
  7. Alexandra Koroxenidis, “A cult figure's latest adventures“ Kathimerini-International Herald Tribune English edition, April 5, 2004
  8. "Artists". Rebecca Camhi Gallery. Retrieved 24 February 2018.