September 24–December 11, 2022
Opening: September 23, 6–9pm
Borrowed: September 24, 5–6pm, book launch
EXHAUST: September 24, 9–10pm, concert
Café Wolf, Annenstraße 18, Graz
“It all started with a swinging bell,” she said. “I want the bell to crack.”
Sign and time are announced when a bell is struck. To celebrate life in Old Town, to hide or worship, to fire employees and start over, to be reminded that life is temporary, to start the clearance sale, to rinse the photographer’s exposed paper, and to blink the safelight. A bell rings internally every time it is struck. RHYTHM, CITIZEN resonates in this interplay of time and population.
The brand names of two clock and watch makers, Rhythm and Citizen, are combined to become RHYTHM, CITIZEN. They were discovered and combined, and they serve as the backdrop for an exhibition that explores and complicates how time measures move and make things move, how they give relics a pulse, influence their fictions and patina, and tempt the creation of images with their fleetingness.
The Grazer Kunstverein is punctuated by RHYTHM, CITIZEN’s use of sculpture, photography, design, and site-specific interventions. It designates the moment when time is stopped, frozen, and encrusted, and then it is started up again. It drifted away from the city of Nicosia like a passage or a crossing and like a time-captor, its eyes opening and closing repeatedly.
Through the cadence of a poem, the regularity of work, the sliding of glass doors, the frequencies of life, the patterns of music, and the movement characterized by a sequence of powerful and weak elements, RHYTHM, CITIZEN takes shape.
RHYTHM, CITIZEN gathers friends and collaborators, neighbors and facilitators: Felix Taylor (Platten Haus), Koula Savvidou, Tasos Lamnisos (x.ypno), Stelios Ilchuk, Claudia Paschalides, Kyriakos Kyriakides, Marietta Mavrokordatou, Lital Ben Haim (thebasketlady), and Photo Net.
RHYTHM, CITIZEN is an occasion for EXHAUST [ΕΞΩΣΤ], an album by x.ypno & steliosilchuk to be played aloud and alive, and for Borrowed, a publication by Maria Toumazou, Aristotelis Nikolas Mochloulis, Georgia Triantafyllidou, Maya Tounta, Koula Savvidou, and Evagoras Vanezis, to be launched.
RHYTHM, CITIZEN is accompanied by R,C, a publication that combines artist statement, photography, and Cypriot rap, with contributions by Koula Savvidou, Tasos Lamnisos (x.ypno), Stelios Ilchuk, Maria Toumazou, Julie Peeters, and Tom Engels.
RHYTHM, CITIZEN is curated by Tom Engels.
A bell is struck within her and keeps on ringing.
A bell is struck and keeps on ringing.
Maria Toumazou (b. 1989, Cyprus) is an artist and publisher based in Nicosia. Recent solo presentations include SCRAP B, Point Centre for Contemporary Art at Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia (2022); Coil, Hot Wheels Athens (2021); and Fair-face Elysée, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia (2019), among others. Toumazou has participated in group exhibitions including SISTERHOOD, Streaming voices unifying energies, Angelo Plessas and P.E.T. Projects, Nicosia (2021); Touch Release, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2021); Hypersurfacing, NiMAC, Nicosia (2019); Soft stone documents, Municipal Arts Centre, Limassol (2017), among others. Neoterismoi Toumazou (Toumazou’s former collective with Orestis Lazouras and Marina Xenofontos) was invited as a special guest to the Cyprus Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2017, Venice, curated by Jan Verwoert. Toumazou is the (co-)founder of Neoterismoi Toumazou, Maria Editions, and Metafora. She was a guest student at Städelschule, Frankfurt, after completing her studies at Goldsmiths College, London, and the Glasgow School of Art. RHYTHM, CITIZEN is her first institutional solo presentation.
The exhibition is realized with the generous support of the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture – Cultural Services, Point Centre for Contemporary Art, and steirischer herbst ’22. Maria Toumazou’s residency at Grazer Kunstverein is made possible with the support of the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture – Cultural Services (through the TRANSIT 2022 Artist Residency Programs scheme).
Grazer Kunstverein is structurally supported by the city of Graz, the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, the province of Styria, legero united—the shoemakers, con-tempus.eu, and its members.
Grazer Kunstverein
Palais Trauttmansdorff
Burggasse 4
8010 Graz
Austria
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 12–6pm
T +43 316 834141
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