Minimal Effort
Group exhibition curated by Elli Leventaki
& Dimitris Kontodimos
Exhibition period
25.4 - 9.5.26
The Minimal Effort project began to take shape, both conceptually and aesthetically, in the summer of 2024, initiated by curator Elli Leventaki and visual artist Dimitris Kontodimos, with the aim of organizing a group exhibition centered on artworks-gestures as alternative methods of artistic production and expression. Starting from Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, but also taking into account more recent examples, such as Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, the exhibition draws on the logic of ready-mades and conceptual interventions, not as artworks that are “easy” to create, conceive, or select, but rather as pieces that can convey a wide range of meanings in a concise manner.
This endeavor aims to take a critical stance toward practices such as intensification, flexibilization, and overwork, which are often promoted as healthy in contemporary Western societies. By contrast, concepts such as “pause” or “standstill” tend to carry negative connotations or are even perceived as a kind of luxury today. This social condition significantly influences artistic production at all levels, because there is no art without so-called “laziness”, as creative people always need time to reflect, experiment, fail, and start over from the beginning. Based on the post-Fordist model, however, a distorted perception of what a creative process entails is perpetuated and reproduced, with an oversimplified emphasis placed on the execution stage, despite the actual work having started much earlier. Thus, although the limits of productive time are constantly being expanded, people involved in the arts are often still not treated as professionals, but are judged primarily on the basis of their executive rather than their intellectual capacity.
Within the capitalist framework, artists often find it nearly impossible to “distinguish themselves from the consuming desire to work at all times”, yet, unlike “those who spend their days trying to capitalize every moment and exchange of daily life”, their goals are mostly related to an inner need for expression, communication, and social reflection. In this light, the artists participating in the exhibition were asked to propose artworks that require the smallest possible effort to take shape, as this is interpreted by each individual based on their own practice. In other words, Minimal Effort seeks to highlight the minimalist, but simultaneously complex nature that a visual gesture can possess, while promoting free creative time as a lifestyle and attitude, at a time when claiming it can be considered as an almost revolutionary act.
The artworks presented here sum up a series of artistic approaches and explorations revolving around the concept of “minimal effort”, leading to the creation of works of a critical, symbolic, or even humorous nature. Some of these may concisely encapsulate a large amount of labor, time, or effort, while others highlight the gesturality and the role of the audience in the reception of contemporary art. Whether they focus on the dynamics of the artistic intervention or on the conceptual dimension of the subject, the proposals by the artists of Minimal Effort raise questions regarding production time, the authorship of a creative act, and the essence of a work of art, inviting the public to reflect on the boundaries of invisible labor in the Artworld.
Participating artists:
Chara Kerasta, Markellos Kolofotias, Panayotis Lianos, Ioannis Markakis, Maria Michailidou, Elektra Stampoulou & Kostis Velonis
Curated by:
Elli Leventaki & Dimitris Kontodimos
@elli_leventaki + @dim_kontodimos
