NIKOS NAVRIDIS
Difficult Breaths
March 18 – April 24, 2004
Nikos Navridis (Athens, 1958) is one of the leading figures of the new generation of Greek artists. He represented Greece in the international biennials of Sao Paulo (1996), Istanbul (1997), Santa Fe in New Mexico (1999), Venice (2001), and he has participated in numerous international exhibitions held in Sweden, Korea, Japan and Ireland.
The main theme of Navridis’ work presented throughout his video installations and projections is concerned with the element of air and specifically with breaths as a natural function or ability of a living human being.
In his new work, under the title Difficult Breaths, the artist has materialised a series of snapshots that depict stunning breaths: a yoga master meditating, a street juggler breathing fire, a peasant blowing between the hide and flesh of an animal as if he were trying to inflate it, a lifeguard performing mouth-tomouth on a drowning victim…
What makes Navridis’ work so important is that he successfully manages to visualise air and the processes of human breathing in an adequate way. This visual task, which is almost impossible in principle, corresponds to the modernist art conception which has always tried to present something impossible or not allowed from a moral, psychological or physical point of view, as something that is both possible and allowed.
By using elements that are lightweight, such as latex, or ethereal, like breath, the artist articulates the relationships of beings with the world and demonstrates the most direct experience of life as a physical process. His characters’ actions make the process of breathing visible, and this process becomes the basis of different metaphors. Underlying these works is the desire to go further and to capture the proximity between life and death. As a result, Navridis turns breathing into a primordial element and shows that despite its fragility, it is capable of transmitting a bevy of intensities.
The gallery remains open Tue-Fri 10:30-20:30, Sat 12:00-16:00. |