This year opens with two major international exhibitions and a series of art events by Bill Balaskas. The press release below provides information on the exhibitions and events.

The Market Will Save The World at Kasa Gallery January 25 to March 8, 2013
The Vision of the Market at the Museum of Contemporary Cuts January 25 to March 8, 2013

Artist: Bill Balaskas
Image credit: Bill Balaskas, You are Leaving the Fantasy Sector, 2011, Mixed media installation.
Lego plastic toys (train, rails, Harry Potter figure), piece from the Berlin Wall (concrete), 75 x 75 x 20 cm.
Courtesy of Kalfayan Galleries (Athens – Thessaloniki). Photo by Constantin Paschou.

We thank for their gracious support: Sabanci University, the Royal College of Art and Kalfayan Galleries (Athens – Thessaloniki).

Curatorial team: Lanfranco Aceti (Senior Curator)
Ozden Sahin (Curator)
Jonathan Munro (Curatorial Assistant)

Is it possible to understand what is the image that the Market has of the world? And what is the image that we consume every day? What is the image that the Market portrays of itself, the world, and us?

Kasa Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC) present two international exhibitions The Market Will Save The World and The Vision of the Market by London-based Greek artist Bill Balaskas.

The Market Will Save the World will present a survey of Balaskas’ practice that spans from the analysis of the economic crisis in Greece to the artist’s latest work, Monopoly (2013), a site-specific installation for Kasa Gallery.

The exhibition at Kasa Gallery follows Bill Balaskas’ intervention on the facade of the Royal College of Art in London, one of the most renowned art schools in the world.

The Vision of the Market will present images, video, or text by the artist every day on MoCC’s twitter and Facebook from January 25 to March 8, 2013. The images will then be collated and archived online on the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC) website.

The exhibition is part of a series of international events that see Balaskas’ artworks and art interventions develop between London and Istanbul – London, the traditional and historical site of financial markets and Istanbul, the financial center of a new emerging market, rapidly rising in the global economic landscape.

This international art project consists of four different major art events:

1) Bill Balaskas’ intervention on the facade of the Royal College of Art in London, one of the most renowned art schools in the world. In this unique and historical public location, next to the Royal Albert Hall, a 23-meter high banner reads “The market will save us.” This work is part of the RCA Research Biennial exhibition at the College from 21-27 January, where Balaskas is undertaking a PhD in Critical Writing.

2) Balaskas’ solo exhibition at Kasa Gallery titled The Market Will Save the World, which will present a survey of the artist’s practice that spans from the analysis of the economic crisis in Greece to his latest work, the site-specific installation Monopoly (2013). The exhibition at Kasa Gallery will open on January 25, 2013 with a performance during which Bill Balaskas will be handing helium balloons with the RCA banner phrase The market will save us printed on them. The balloons will be signed by the artist and tied on the wrists of 100 visitors on the opening night.

3) Kasa Gallery, which is supported by Sabanci University, will also present as part of the exhibition The Market Will Save the World the phrase The market will save us as a public advert on a full page of Frieze magazine’s March issue. By becoming part of the magazine, Bill Balaskas’ artwork shall adopt the dual and ambivalent character of an advert/commentary on the influence of globalized capitalism on art. This is a Kasa Gallery collaboration with the Royal College of Art, Kalfayan Galleries (Athens – Thessaloniki) and the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC).

4) The exhibition The Vision of the Market will feature a series of images and videos shot in London and Istanbul by Bill Balaskas, which are inspired by and reference the artist’s video The Wealth of Nations (2010). This material will be accompanied by texts selected or written by the artist that will be disseminated one per day on MoCC’s Twitter and Facebook.

The exhibitions, arts interventions, images and videos will provide viewers with a vision of the omnipotence of the market: as a new god, this vision is holy, mystic, dogmatic and unassailable. A vision of the market’s forces that does not allow for any criticism, analyses or questions. “The righteousness of the Market is such, that to question it means to be forced on the Foucauldian boat of madness and being condemned to the empty wasteland of a hopeless horizon. The problem is that hopelessness, for an increasingly large strata of society, is the characterizing element of the current capitalistic vision,” said Lanfranco Aceti introducing these international events that will take place between London and Istanbul from January 25 to March 8, 2013.

Bio of the Artist

Bill Balaskas
Bill Balaskas (b. Thessaloniki, Greece, 1983) is a London-based artist working across different media. Balaskas is a research student in the MPhil/PhD programme in Critical Writing in Art & Design at the Royal College of Art, London and holds an MA (2010) in Communication Art & Design from the same college. In 2008 he earned a BA (Hons) in Video Arts Production from the University for the Creative Arts, Maidstone (UK), and in 2004 a BSc in Economics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). His work has been widely exhibited internationally. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include presentations at KASA Gallery (Sabanci University), Istanbul; New Positions (Art Cologne), Cologne (both 2013); Kalfayan Galleries, Athens (2012); Institut Français de Thessalonique (3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art), Thessaloniki (2011); Jewish Museum, London; and Sketch Gallery, London (both 2010). Balaskas recently represented the UK in the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and in Maribor, Slovenia, European Capital of Culture 2012. Also, he is an awarded writer and an editor for the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (The MIT Press). In April 2012, the Global Board of Contemporary Art pronounced him as one of the four most important emerging artists around the world (ALICE Awards 2012) and he is currently a nominee for the 2013 AUDI Art Award of Art Cologne for the most innovative young artist. Bill Balaskas is represented by Kalfayan Galleries (Athens – Thessaloniki). For more information, please, visit: www.billbalaskas.com. For high resolution images of the artist’s works, please, contact: info@kalfayangalleries.com.
Kasa Gallery is sponsored and supported by Sabanci University.

Venue information and dates

Address: Sabanci University Kasa Gallery Minerva Han Bankalar Caddesi No: 2 Karakoy 34420 Istanbul Turkey

Visiting hours: 10:00 – 17:00 everyday except Sunday

Exhibition Dates: 25 January – 8 March 2013