MILTOS MANETAS ‘1998’
 

The Galerie Hussenot is delighted to present Greek artist Miltos Manetas’ solo show, yours to discover in the Marais from June 6th to July 20th 2019.

Miltos Manetas is a Greek painter, multimedia artist and theoretician, whose work is inextricably linked to the digital world. He’s particularly interested in the impact of the internet and the development of new technologies relating to communication and human interactions.

Miltos is part of the relational art movement, described by Nicolas Bourriaud as ‘a theory of aesthetics which involves judging works of art in the light of the interpersonal relationships that they depict, create or provoke.’

He is also a founder of the ‘Neen’ art movement, which is indissociable with the subject of IT and digital culture. Elizabeth Hayt of the New York Times describes this movement as being ‘visual culture inspired by or based on computer technology, including fine art, web design and video games, as well as by any number of things sleek, portable and plastic.’

His work takes the shape of paintings of electrical cables, web pages, interactive installation art using video games and the creation of cutting-edge websites – all these projects are focused upon the aesthetics of new technology and their impact upon humanity.

A good example of this dates to 2002, when he made something of a splash and turned the conventions of the institutional art world upside down when he created the ‘WhitneyBiennial.com’ website, using the name of an event held at the Whitney Museum of American Art. By doing so, he appropriated part of this museum’s and this event’s identity for himself, subverting them in order to offer other artists the recognition and influence that comes from the biennial’s high public profile. Or what about in 2009, when he dreamed up the first ‘Internet Pavilion’ at the world-famous Venice Biennale, with the help of curator Jan Aman and activists from The Pirate Bay? Completely unlike the Biennale’s traditional pavilions, which represent only one country, the internet pavilion preaches a completely open approach.

As his famous saying, ‘Outside of the Internet there is no glory’ suggests, Miltos Manetas’ identification with and dedication to the internet generation is total. Nicknamed ‘El Greco of the Geeks’ by Steven Shipside in an article in the Guardian in 1997, Miltos Manetas is indisputably one of the internet generation’s most active creatives.