Oval | Nikos Artemis
Nikos Artemis' video-installation Oval combines multiple projections, music, and contemporary dance
The multiple projections installation by Nikos Artemis, titled Oval, occupies the whole of CHEAPART's exhibition space and brings together different creative fields that equally interest the artist: visual arts as the starting point of his work, music that Artemis has been practicing for a long time and has lead to the creation of Opera di Bestia, and finally his interest in contemporary dance, movement and the body and, more specifically, in the production of dance films.
Oval is connected with the artist's previous show This is not a love song, which also was presented in the same exhibition space two years ago; with the use of elements of entertainment and lifestyle, Lewis Carroll coexisted with techno music, and romanticism with the irony of the stereotype of the artists and his model. This time, the spectator is guided to the other side of the mirror and revisits the artist's model.
The female figure is found entrapped in space and time. The repetitive movements refer to an ambiguous situation, at the same time claustrophobic, addictively hypnotic and uncanny. Entrapped within a circle, without any visible obstacles, she improvises and explores the potential of her existence.
The projections' shape is oval, a voyeuristic hint, projected on different parts of the walls of the apartment-gallery space, as if questioning the meaning of up and down, horizontal and vertical.
dance films in loop:
The method of the production of the works, in a total absence of digital effects, adopts a "pure" cinematography: simply using a black space, everything is based on regular and counter flow of the projected moving image. In this way, Artemis refers to the first cinema studio of Thomas Edison, Black Maria, 1893 where the first films in history where released, along with the everlasting repetition of movements of the characters - ghosts in the novel The Invention of Morel of Adolfo Bioy Casares.
The music, like an echo coming out of the black room, plays a decisive role in the work's experience, subjecting the spectator into a particular atmosphere, which defines the viewing tempo of the installation.
Oval may be potentially a more romantic view on subject matter. The existential angst coexists with few but intense lyrical moments, leaving however something pending: like an abandoned luna park's wheel, that the wind spins over our heads.
Maybe, as it turns out, the promised paradise never existed.
Curated by: Eleni Koukou
→ Oval Video
→ Soundtrack for “Oval” multiple projections video installation
Nikos Artemis –music, Kostis Kousoulos – audio engineering
The dance films were produced in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Pauline Huguet
Echoes from the black room, no kicks (duration 28’ 03’’)
Music: Opera di Bestia
Sound engineering: Kostis Kousoulos
a macht f studio:
Set lighting: Alexandros Monokandylos
Best boy: Avis Donum Dei
Technical support: John Malatantis, CHEAPART, friends
Acknowledgments: Claudia Fox, Ilias Mentzelopoulos, Kostas Bassanos, Nikos Papadopoulos
Opening: Friday November 21, 2014, 20.00
Duration: 21.11 – 5.12.2014
Visiting hours: Tuesday – Friday 18.00 - 21.00, Saturday 12.00 - 16.00
CHEAPART
25 A.Metaxa str. Athens, 106 81
