29.LEONIDOU 25 28.GIATRAKOU 10 27.IERA ODOS 28 26.DANIHL PROFITOU 18 25.SALAMINOS 72 24.PARAMITHIAS 6 20.IASONOS 45 21.IASONOS 47 22.PERDIKA 8 23.GIATRAKOU 28 12.KERAMEIKOU 28 13.KOLONOU 29 14.LEONIDOU 11 16.DELIGIORGI 43 19.IASONOS 26 18.LEONIDOU 26 15.LEONIDOU 9 17.LEONIDOU 15 11.KERAMEIKOU 32 10.KERAMEIKOU 43 09.KERAMEIKOU 51 08.AGISILAOU 92 07.KERAMEIKOU 73 06.THERMOPYLON 23 05.THERMOPYLON 27 04.LEONIDOU & MYLLEROU 03.LEONIDOU 38 02.LEONIDOU 36 01.GIATRAKOU 2, INFO POINT
JÚLIUS KOLLER, « J.K. Ping-Pong Club » (U.F.O), 1970, Exhibition in gallery of Young Artists, Bratislava, Photo : Milan Sirkovsky

JÚLIUS KOLLER, « J.K. Ping-Pong Club » (U.F.O), 1970, Exhibition in gallery of Young Artists, Bratislava, Photo : Milan Sirkovsky

JÚLIUS KOLLER, « Anti-Ping-Pong Player » (U.F.O.), 1980, Performance, Bratislava,

JÚLIUS KOLLER, « Anti-Ping-Pong Player » (U.F.O.), 1980, Performance, Bratislava,

1980, « Theory Versus Praxis » (U.F.O.), Performance,, Bratislava

1980, « Theory Versus Praxis » (U.F.O.), Performance,, Bratislava

JÚLIUS KOLLER, Ping Pong Cultural Situation, 2007, Performance, gb agency, Art Basel

JÚLIUS KOLLER, Ping Pong Cultural Situation, 2007, Performance, gb agency, Art Basel

JÚLIUS KOLLER, Ping Pong Cultural Situation, 2007, gb agency, Art Basel

JÚLIUS KOLLER, Ping Pong Cultural Situation, 2007, gb agency, Art Basel

JÚLIUS KOLLER, Up and Down, 2007, Performance, gb agency, Art Basel

JÚLIUS KOLLER, Up and Down, 2007, Performance, gb agency, Art Basel

12
ARTISTS

Július Koller

ReMap3 ADDRESS
28 Kerameikou, ground floor
CONTACT

gb@gbagency.fr
+33 (0)1 44 78 00 60

PERMANENT ADDRESS
18 rue des 4 fils, 75003 Paris
All images are Courtesy gb agency, Paris

GB Agency
Július Koller: Ping Pong Club

For Remap 03, gb agency presents a solo project by Július Koller (Born in 1939 in Piestany, Czechoslovakia. Died in 2007. Lived and worked in Bratislava, Slovakia).

Július Koller worked in the margins society, offering a utopic and poetic message that aimed at restoring freedom of thought, subjectivity and communication in a place where the individual was outweighed by the impositions of social order of the communist regime. Over the course of years, Július Koller transformed himself into a symbol, connecting with situations and configurations of everyday life through minimal actions and gestures.

«I’m interested in the transformation of everyday situations in life into “cultural situations”, which I, as an individual, turn in a ‘non-studio’ way into an objective reality through a subjective intervention. (…) I think I’m a situationist because I don’t organize my performance in places set aside for that purpose, but in everyday surroundings and in normal situations». (Július Koller interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist)

In 1970, at the “Gallery of the Young” in Bratislava, Július Koller set up a ping-pong club for one month in place of an exhibition, inviting visitors to play and meet. Like in other of his demonstrative moments, such as positioning a question mark on his face or manually inscribing, marking and outlining this sign in various contexts and places as a constant and recurring motif, this was an act of transformation intended as active representation and interrogation – a momentary existential creativity that expresses itself in a cultural situation.

Here the work becomes a place for exchange, a game table of both action and potential dialogue – a metaphor for fairness and a level field of social interaction. For the third edition of ReMap, gb agency reactivates Koller’s ping pong club.

In Július Koller’s obituary published in Frieze in November 2007, Jan Verwoert writes: “The unruly optimism that Koller articulated in his Conceptual art practice and embodied as a person were a source of inspiration that I now can’t do without: they constituted an irrefutable argument for making art and pursuing criticism and for the joy that could be gained in doing so, no matter how marginal such activities should appear to the society at large.

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