Katerina Komianou participates in the exhibition Nictophilia II

It has been argued that the best time to read poetry or philosophy is between 1-5 in the morning. That is also more than often the most creative time of the day for most artists, writers and creatives.

The show Nyctophilia II focuses on this psychological condition and functions as a prelude to all the lovers of the night and of all things dark.

Katerina Komianou (Fellow 2019) is a post-romantic night dweller. Her works focus on ideas around eros (love) and symbolically make use of materials such as magnets, palm-trees and alocasia plants which she materially transforms by capturing them in resin and liquid glass. Her series Blue Letters are a series of love letters she writes using a sharp tool on rubber and then erases creating a series of cryptic black panels.

Efi Haliori presents work from her 2018 series Into The Dark. In an effort to surpass her fear of the dark the artist began an 18-month photographic journey through woods and parks of Attica. The result is a series where we see her experimenting with light and darkness in a group of images that are dominated by flashes of light on trees, branches and rocks as they aggressively pop up in front of the viewer. The Into The Dark series manages to transcend all the tension and the emotional load of her adventure into images that cover up her feelings and are characterised by formalistic integrity, tranquility and a dramatic chiaroscuro.

Marianna Ignataki is using synthetic prosthetic hair and wigs worn in the Chinese opera which she then sews together and onto fabrics to create her sculptural installations. Her oeuvre is referencing Chinese philosophy, myths and tradition, bearded ladies, hairmen, the circus, the opera and all the weird creatures of the night. Her works deal with issues of gender, identity and otherness through beauty and the grotesque.

Alexis Vasilikos’ Black Matter(s) series is a blend between straight photography and highly manipulated/digital collages. Together they represent two juxtaposing realities. Abstract images that use photography as a raw material, compositions made of scratches, dust, optical noise and light and less processed, dark, enigmatic, photographic works which stand between traditional analogue photography and abstract painting.

Lefteris Tapas presents a dark, weightless, see-through curtain -both a window and a barrier- that is delicately made by cutting-out paper by hand in a slow, repetitive and mediative process. His elaborate cuts with frill that look like foliage present the other side of darkness, full of negatives and shadows. Weaved webs, thin, black, frozen thrills. A darkness dream-like and elliptical, a shadow theatre, a constructed landscape of a real or spiritual/imagined world.

Anestis Anestis is a new media artist who has created an algorithm that creates abstract compositions made of a multitude of images returned by Google and Flickr when searching the word “night”. Using custom made software, each image returned by the search engine is stacked on top of the other and the total set of the query results is condensed into a single image. A historic reference to Pointillism -a painting method developed by neo-impressionists analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process- Anestis’ work highlights the consistency of human perception in the analog and digital domains and references Claude Monet’s impressionist method of painting many times the same scene in order to capture the light and the essence of the passing of time.

Alexandros Laios’ work often engages with the observation of time and the moment in which sunlight fades and the day turns into evening. The only white work on the exhibition an horizon made of marble that spells the phrase “This land is your land this land is not your land flat land flat land” is a welcome and a goodbye to that last episode of sunlight, its last before it is gone. At the same time the work alludes to the world of darkness and of dreams, a world that it is not ‘ours’ nor it can be owned by anyone.

Participating artists: Anestis Anestis, Efi Haliori, Marianna Ignataki, Katerina Komianou, Alexandros Laios, Lefteris Tapas, Alexis Vasilikos

Duration: 10.09.20 – 10.10.20