The Cultural Olympiad’s much anticipated Outlook , an international exhibition aiming to stand out in an “image-saturated” world, opened in Athens in November with a total of 250 works (including over 20 installations) by 85 artists from 21 countries. The mega-show is hosted in three neighbouring venues.

For many of the partaking artists, the key to making a visual bang is clearly size: UK-based installation artist Damien Hirst’s disabled girl, Charity, appeals to the onlooker’s generosity from an imposing 6.7 metres – maybe that way she’ll get more attention than the millions of huddled forms seeking generosity on street corners around the world.

Sarah Lucas’ giant Wanking Arm brings home a memorable message of sex and politics, despite the constant bombardment we face on that front. While Wim Delvoye’s Caterpillar, a life-size bulldozer perforated with Gothic filigree, clearly fits into the pre- 2004 Athens cityscape, with its temporary relief of bulldozers and holes-in-the-ground, the result of an extraordinary metamorphosis.

Art in a vibrant city
The problem of hosting an exhibition of this size (the largest of its kind ever to be held in Greece, with a budget of some 2.3 million euros) is solved by visually and physically hijacking three exhibition spaces along Piraeus Street: the former Athenian gasworks, a mid-19th century industrial complex exquisitely converted into a municipal art centre called Technopolis ; the brand new Benaki Museum’s branch and The Factory , a part of the Athens School of Fine Arts complex.

Keeping the exhibition within the city centre was essential for the exhibition’s artistic director, Christos Joachimides , who stresses that Athens is a living and breathing part of the exhibition. And what Joachimides has in mind is definitely not the romanticised Athens as tourism ideal or the “hyper-archaeological space”, but the “vibrant and amorphous network of interrelated forces”.

This is a city full of idiosyncrasies and contradictions; it can be frustratingly deficient, at times awesomely bizarre, and like all cities it has undergone spectacular changes. “Rapid developments in the entertainment industry, the mass media and the dissolving boundaries between public and private space determine the frenetic changes in society,” Joachimides notes.

For Jan Fabre – whose Searching for Utopia (a massive bronze sculpture of himself atop a giant turtle, a metaphor on metamorphosis) is an exhibition favourite – Athens suits his work perfectly “since it is a city under transformation”. For his part, Francis Alys uses Athens directly in a video installation, in which he walks through the city of Athens at night, throwing flare lights every 30 steps while videotaping and photographing his oeuvre.

The exhibition’s goal
Joachimides does not just want artists and art-lovers happy; his aim is not to create a “sterile show of pseudo-intellectual character” but to attract the general public. With him on this point, culture minister Evangelos Venizelos wants to attract so-called minority groups.

But attracting larger crowds isn’t the only goal. Greece is longing to be a larger dot on the international contemporary art map and is clearly staking its reputation on Outlook to provide the one opportunity that the local artistic community has long coveted. Thanks to the influx of press attention as part of the Cultural Olympiad it may well happen.

But which map? There’s an overwhelming majority of artists from the Western world exhibiting in Outlook, with only one artist from China, three from African countries and another three from Mexico. For acclaimed local artist Alekos Fassianos, this is a disappointment. “Why should what is happening at this moment in the West have any bearing on us?” he tells Greek daily Kathimerini . “I would prefer Outlook to be truly global, to have more artists from China, Japan, India, Africa and Latin America.”

On the local field, there are 11 artists taking part, some of which have gained reputation outside of Greece. Maria Papadimitriou is one of Greece’s quirkiest artists and her Event Platform, expresses a clear Western contemporary art mood, but is also flushed in a Mediterranean blue and hints at a traditional Greek household.

George Lappas, who lives and works in Athens and teaches sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts , has an impressive installation on show called Bingo Bonanza, where his use of lighting is memorable. Also featured in the exhibition is Piraeus-born arte povera master, Rome-based installation artist Jannis Kounellis .