30 Aug. 2012

OMMU is pleased to announce the first solo show of the artist Jessica Hans (Baltimore, MD, USA) in Greece, ‘Salt of the Earth’.
The exhibition is inspired by themes involving the materiality of our world. The forms and surfaces seen here are in direct response to abstract patterns and motifs that you may find in nature. The functional aspect of ceramics plays a significant role in this body of work; this material that comes from the ground has roots deep in the history of mankind and has served a purpose in our lives for thousands of years. Salt of the Earth is a translation of the textures and designs that we find in nature into vessel-like forms. The artist is interested in giving the viewer the opportunity to experience, in tangible form, a refined essence of our world.

Jessica Hans is a Baltimore-based artist with a background in ceramics and textiles. When not in her studio, she is constantly traveling and documenting the natural world around her.

Jessica Hans, Salt of the Earth
7 – 22 September 2012

Jessica Hans

27 Aug. 2012

OMMU at THE GREEK PAVILLON
organised by the Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale

In 2012 the Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale is in exile.
The idea of a Greek Pavillon has been developed in collaboration with Greek artists, curators and others.
A series of exhibitions features a perspective from inside the Greek reality under the influence of a european crisis.

The aim of this years edition is to draw some attention to the serious situation in Greece as well as to give an inside view of it to the people abroad.

OMMU presents Pre-Paradise Sorry Now

A presentation of Greek artists’ publications starting from the 60s and up to contemporary production, a body of work which from time to time is brought back to the surface. It functions both as an archive, as well as ‘new’, ‘fresh’ work, reflecting to contemporary art practices, book-making and artists’ publishing. The content also relates to art, literature as well as poetry & film.

The presentation is based on a key element which is used to approach the material. The Polygnotan Color Scale.

The colored book covers function as a setting, reflecting the 4 basic colors used by ancient greek painter Polygnotus, a backbone on which we can revisit the archive and place it on a specific background.
The Polygnotan Color Scale uses different visual elements than CMYK, as it totally ignores and omits the color Blue. It is essentially another model of composing a full-color image.
The colors used are Black, White, Red and Yellow (Ochre).
The Scale is transformed into books, which conceivably contain a number of reference Greek art books.

Identifying the nature of the exhibits as a kind of mechanical model – of a return to Paradise – as an electroshock of resuscitation, not from death to life, but from life to Paradise.
From the lost notion of craft, to the sinful print, and from the theatrical heaven of the Persian garden to a Terirem monologue of the Byzantium, the Polygnotan Scale functions as a matrix-uterus on artist book covers, the first encounter with the cover, a question of which color wins you over, the formal Black, the innocent White, the imperial Red, the solar Yellow, the first encounter which resembles the scent of instant Paradise or Hell.
-The title of the show “Pre-paradise Sorry Now’”, is borrowed from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s theatrical play, his response to the performance ‘Paradise Now’ of the Living Theatre. All rights Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

THE GREEK PAVILLON
KANENAMELLON – EVIL – PRE-PARADISE SORRY NOW
Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale 2012
September 7 2012 – September 9 2012
OPEN MUSEUM / Galerie der Gegenwart / Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
&
September 27 2012 – October 3 2012
PALAIS DE TOKYO, Paris

Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale

08 May. 2012

Solution Greece?
Zak Group

25th May – 16th June, 2012

OMMU presents the first exhibition in Greece by the London-based design office Zak Group. For the exhibition, Zak Group presents the Sternberg Press Solution series, edited by Ingo Niermann and designed by Zak Group beginning in 2008.

The Solution series invites authors to develop an abundance of compact and original ideas for countries and regions, contradicting the widely held assumption that after the end of socialism, human advancement is only possible technologically or requires a yet-to-be-established world order. In Solution 9: The Great Pyramid, Niermann writes: “When I told Rem Koolhaas about my title idea for the book series, he seemed earnestly alarmed. ‘Solution’ is a word he never uses. He demonstrated how his hand automatically begins to shake as soon as he even wants to write it.”

Zak Group is a London-based design office founded in 2005 by Zak Kyes; in 2012 Grégory Ambos joined as partner. The studio’s work has been included in the 22nd International Biennale of Graphic Design (Brno, 2009), “Graphic Design for and Against Cities” (Corner College, Zurich, 2009), “The Malady of Writing” (MACBA, Barcelona, 2009), “Wide White Space” (CCA Wattis, San Francisco, 2011), and “Graphic Design Worlds” (Triennale Design Museum, Milan, 2011).

For the exhibition OMMU has produced 25 + 10 A.P. limited edition two-color screen prints for sale through the bookshop titled “Solution Greece?” by Zak Group with Ingo Niermann.

Zak Group

10 Mar. 2012

OMMU at PA/PER VIEW
23th – 25th March, 2012

The 4th edition of PA/PER VIEW Brussels will take place at Wiels.

PA/PER VIEW art book fair brings together +/- 40 leading artist book publishers.
Leave your laptop behind and come and browse amongst the finest titles of these consistent players of the printed word and image.

Pa/per View

08 Dec. 2011

The Kingsboro Press
ALLEY OOP

OMMU presents an exhibition organized by The Kingsboro Press
9th – 24th December, 2011

There’s a man in the funny papers we all know
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
He lived way back a long time ago
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
Oh well this cat’s name is a-Alley Oop
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
He’s got a chauffeur that’s a genuine dinosaur
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
He rides through the jungle tearin’ limbs offa trees
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
And knocking great big monsters dead on their knees
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
Other cats don’t bug him ‘cos they know better
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
Cos he’s a mean motor scooter and a bad go-getter
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
The Kingsboro Press presents
Miles Houston, Indiana Jones, Will Hunting, Neal Reinalda, Erik Lindman
Alley Oop

28 Nov. 2011

ROLU 4 OMMU

ROLU is an art and design studio based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
OMMU is an art and design bookstore/distributor based in Athens, Greece.

ROLU 4 OMMU is four pieces of furniture, two large modular adaptable chairs, Chair 1 and Chair 2, as well as A Desk and A Desk Chair, that are part of a new design ROLU made for OMMU’s store in Athens. Also produced in this project was a bookshelf that is based on a work by the artist Seth Price and a ladder. Price’s essay Décor Holes came to be an important part of our thinking as these pieces started to emerge. The writing discusses, in part, the “sample” as it exists in modern music and questions it raises about ownership. We started to ask ourselves “When does something… become something else?” We wanted the work we produced for this project to have a theoretical basis that pointed towards language. We also wanted to think about motion. We like to use the term “sitting as seeing” to describe a philosophical ghost we are chasing. The forms of these pieces are, in a sense, like “visual samples.” They are based on shapes found in drawings the choreographer Trisha Brown made in the early seventies. These drawings contain a sense of motion and it’s easy to see their visual connection to dance but, they also look like typography… like a written language we don’t quite recognize. And so we ask ourselves: When does a dance become a drawing? When does a drawing become a chair? Can a chair act as a kind of choreographer? Maybe we’ll never know but we love how they turned out and hope you do too!

A two sided poster designed by Benjamin Critton for the release of ROLU 4 OMMU is available to download and print here. The posters were originally available as part of MISS READ at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.

A book about ROLU’s work designed by Benjamin Critton will be published by OMMU in 2012.

ROLU4OMMU

08 Nov. 2011

OMMU at MISS READ Art Book Fair
25th – 27th November, 2011

For the third time MISS READ has invited international publishers and artists to show their books at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. As a genre of its own, the artist book reflects contemporary ways of artistic production and publishing to a great extent and also addresses issues of presentation and circulation as well as new strategies of distribution. Presenting a selection of more than 80 of the most active contributors in this field, the festival provides the opportunity to encounter and explore the contemporary scene of independent publishing.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin