11th (ΙΑ’) PAINTING STUDIO / DIRECTOR: VASSILEIOS VLASTARAS
Studio’s description
The studio was established in the autumn of 2018.
Studio11asfa offers an open and supportive educational and artistic environment, promoting an interdisciplinary and expanded approach to contemporary art, and attracting an active community of students. Students are actively encouraged and supported in critically engaging with the theoretical and practical stakes of contemporary art. Through sustained, meaningful experimentation and specialized discourse, they are guided in shaping their individual creative trajectories. This process fosters the development and realization of complex artistic projects and contemporary works across a broad spectrum of innovative and conceptually rigorous directions.
The staff’s experience covers a wide range of interests in individual, collaborative, interdisciplinary, expanded visual, and research practices. All students participate in the same studio program in a spirit of collaboration, exchange of ideas, and development of tools. The educational approach at at studio11asfa centers on an in-depth exploration of historical, modern, and contemporary art movements, including avant-garde practices. Its goal is to foster a deep understanding of—and active engagement with—key debates in contemporary art, as well as current and emerging developments in the global art scene. This vibrant studio and research environment plays a crucial role in acquainting students with the concepts, trends, and critical questions that have shaped the last three decades, while strengthening the connection between artistic practice and the digital, post-digital, online, and visual cultures of the 21st century
At studio11asfa, the teaching of contemporary artistic practice is in constant dialogue with the history of the arts, the philosophy and theory of art, social and political thought, broader humanities, contemporary identities, feminist thought, queer practice, and the politics of desire. Students are encouraged to develop a personalized work program, with technical and research support from the teaching staff. The studio places particular emphasis on cultivating a contemporary aesthetic language rooted in the multifaceted evolution of the modern subject and the inclusive engagement with the complex imaginary realms of contemporary subjectivities. Central to the pedagogical framework is the integration of specialised seminars, regular lectures by artists, art theorists, and curators from both the national and international contemporary art scenes, alongside organised visits to art institutions, thematic and temporary exhibitions, museums, and artists’ studios. These activities play a pivotal role in enriching the students’ critical awareness and contextual understanding of current artistic discourses.
Studio11asfa offers a broad understanding of how postwar art movements expanded artistic practice, with an emphasis on significant changes from the 1990s to the present. Teaching pays close attention to the analysis of mechanisms behind major artistic examples, ranging from conceptual, minimalist, and post-minimalist art; expanded notions of site-specific art; the legacies of happenings, actions, situations, and performance; feminist art; the various versions of public art; choices related to socially engaged art and artistic activism; to examples of New Media, tactical media, net.art, and culture jamming; relational, dialogical, and participatory art; art in the age of globalization and decolonization; digital culture and the ruptures of the post-digital era; examples of post-internet art; the dialogue with machine learning and artificial intelligence; the impact of posthumanism on artistic perspectives; experiments with mixed reality; gaming and video game culture; the online culture of Web 2.0 and its sociopolitical dimensions. The analysis and discussion of these examples aim to develop a personal relationship between the online self and the body, between the “digital” and the “embodied,” allowing for the emergence of new materialities and forms of user culture. The workshop’s experimental program is based on the continuous feedback of individual and original research, aiming at the personal and collective construction of worlds.
The central goal of the studio is the development of an integrated and contemporary artistic self, capable of understanding both the developments in the professional field of contemporary art and the creative industries, as well as the radical prospects of new artistic endeavors. The studio seeks to cultivate an artistic self that is based both on critical reflection of the conditions and on the desire for engagement and immersion in the expanded aesthetic reality of the new century.
256 Peiraios str., 18233, Aghios Ioannis Rentis
Telephone: +30 210 4801237
Webpage: https://studio11asfa.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/studio11asfa/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio11asfa/
Studio Schedule
The studio is open daily from 9.00 am to 8.00 pm except Saturdays, Sundays and official holidays.
The schedule of classes, lectures, and other events is announced to the students.
The studio’s professors announce the days and times their availability for scheduling apointments.
VASSILIS VLASTARAS / Professor
Visual Artist, Professor ASFA, Director of studio11asfa
Vassilis Vlastaras born at Athens in 1963 and grow up at Argos GR.
In his visual practice, Vlastaras creates large-scale site-specific installations by experimenting with various media in painting, drawing, photography, video, artist books, real time video and sound performances and computer interactive installations. By producing various artwork, he examines the relationship between artwork and urban space, the notion of the ephemeral and the interrelation between spatial movement, material and sound, often mixing different media, actions, sound poetry, writings and several elements of a heterogeneous and scalable objects. In his work, where interactivity and multimedia are vital he is continually investigating the relationships between the appetite for life and the frenzy of death, the personal and social implications of loss, oblivion, history, memory and the subsequent acts of remembrance/memorialisation. Vlastaras is teaching in Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) from 1999.
As a director of studies in studio11asfa, he likes to provide an open and supportive environment for engagement with the process of art making at the highest level, attracting an activate community of students. He encourages and supports his students, to realise and strengthen their creative potential through experimentation, dialogue and fine art making in all its forms by working alongside each other in an open studio environment creating a crossover between all artistic areas. Vassilis Vlastaras was the co-founder of ΠLATFORMES (2002-2008), a collective of art professionals ranking from visual artists to art theorists, musicians and filmmakers in Athens. Between 2006 and 2010 he was the main coordinator of Utopia Project, an annual summer residency program for artists in collaboration with experienced International artists, theorists and political scientists. Utopia Workshops were hosted by ASFA in the annex of ASFA in Rethymno, Crete, where Vlastaras performed a series of lectures and seminars about each year’s utopia’s subject. From 2013 he has been a founder and artistic director of asfaBBQ an international meeting for practitioners, theorists, students and audiences of time-based arts. From 2019 he is a co-founder of ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture an always-evolving institution for the experimentation with the limits between artistic production, the public sphere, the experience of the city and contemporary art education.
Email: vvlastaras@asfa.gr
KOSTIS STAFYLAKIS / Assistant Professor
Visual Artist, Assistant Professor of Fine Arts, Expanded Media and Forms
Dr. Kostis Stafylakis is a visual artist and art theorist with a PhD in Political Science from the Department of Political Sciences and History at Panteion University, Athens. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts and he also holds an MA in Art Theory and an MA in Continental Philosophy from the University of Essex. His works often take the form of navigation through the online and physical space of fringe social groups. His published essays and curatorials delve into the relation between the “mimetic”, the “political”, society, and contemporary selfhood from the post-war to post-internet condition. He has taught Research-based Art, art theory, Visual Communication, and contemporary art at the Athens School of Fine Arts and the University of Patras. He has been a post-doc researcher at ASFA and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He took part in the Future Art Education program by Lab12/ASFA. He has taught at the post-graduate program of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Western Macedonia, and at the post-graduate program “Art and Public Sphere” of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts and the School of Political Sciences of Aristotle University. He was co-curator of the 6th Athens Biennale ANTI, the 4th Athens Biennale AGORA, Weasel Dance at Goethe-Institut Athen, Twisting C(r)ash at the Batiment d’Art Contemporain, Geneva and more. He has curated various shows, such as “The Suspension of Litanies”, “Fuyuhiko Takata” at ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture, and “A politics of lies” at Circuits & Currents (2016). He has been the founding Artistic Director of ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture (2019-2020). His most recent solo show was Chloroquine Juggalo at KEIV Athens (2021) and his most recent two-person show was Readiness: Civil War at Panke Gallery, Berlin (2022). His artistic activity, solo or in duet with artist Vana Kostayola or other artists, includes participations at Prepper Paradise, Bureau Europa (2022), Bless’ed Curse by soloshow.online (2021), Toxicfest at Tick Tack Antwerpen (2021), Toxicfest at the bsmnt gallery, Leipzig (2021), Toxicfest at Video Cypher, Hong Kong (2021), Toxicfest at Mock Jungle, Bologna (2021), Oblique Field (Twitch event by Gossamer Fog, London, 2021), Enter: New Commissions by Onassis Foundation (2020), Kultursymposium Weimar (2019), the “Festival of Democracy” of Geneva (2017), Neue Ravensburger Kunstverein (2017), Waiting for the Barbarians by Athens Biennale (2017), “Omonoia” 5th Athens Biennale (2016), Enjoy your State of Emergency at NGBK, Berlin (2015), 1st NSK Biennial of Folk Art (2014), Hell as Pavillion at Palais de Tokyo (2013), Truth is Concrete by Steirischer Herbst, Graz (2012), Monodrome 3rd Athens Biennale (2011), Media Impact at the 4th Moscow Biennial (2011). He has edited various volumes and journals such as the Greek Anthology “The Political in Contemporary Art” (EKKREMES, 2008), with Yannis Stavrakakis. In 2006, he founded KavecS, with Artist Vana Kostayola an artistic experiment on the mimetic re-processing of social reality.
Email: kstafylakis@asfa.gr
JIM EFTHIMIOY / Laboratory Teaching Staff
Visual Artist, Teaching Staff at the Athens School of Fine Arts
Jimis Efthimiou. Visual artist & writer. Studied Mathematics (NKUA), Painting, Sculpture (ASFA), Music (CCMR), Architecture (EMP, master). Author of two school books (Greek Ministry of Education): “The innovation of Research Works in Lyceum”, “The lesson of Sculpture in Art Schools” and many of his own literature/poet material. Participant in various underground artistic groups and communities focusing on activism and public space. He messed with art not having the nerve and carriage to do scuba diving or mountain climbing. His recent work is based on giant dimensions’ details of his future work.
Email: dimeft@asfa.gr