Rooms 2014

A disturbance of memory

A Disturbance of Memory

In his large format composition “A Disturbance of Memory” Alexandros Maganiotis re-draws an obscene, bold, but for most “sacrilegious” proposalbythe Bavarian architect K. F. Schinkel(1834)to build a new royal palace for Otto, the King of Greece, on the Acropolis in Athens. The architectural forms that were proposed but never built upon the castle mountain – on sacred ground- are combined with logos from German automobile companies in between the ancient ruins. A subversive render of the statue of Goddess Athena with an owl head wearing a helmet and holding a rifle, dressed up in period costume from the Greek revolution era(1821). But the phrase: “When, finally, on the afternoon after our arrival, I stood on the Acropolis and cast my eyes around upon the landscape, a surprising thought suddenly entered my mind: So all this really does exist, just as we learned at school!” is what energizes the drawing it from Sigmund Freud and refers to his text: “a disturbance of memory on the Acropolis” from when he visited Athens in1904. He is astonished, he experiences a revelation;reality invades in the domain of myth. A poster from Bertolt Brecht’s “Three penny Opera” and a German debt bond complete the picture. In the seconded drawing entitled “Trojan Horse” we can see Neuschwanstein, the fantasy castle that Ludwig II built in Bavarian Alps -later adopted Disney’s logo- as a background behind the bodies of Greek immigrants in Germany some which have animal heads. Inside a concrete-mixer truck there is a of the Trojan horse.