Nakis Panayiotidis is an artist with international recognition. His works are in many private collections and museums abroad. However, in Greece his work remains less known.

With the retrospective exhibition “Nakis Panayotidis – Shut your Eyes and See“, the Elise and Basil Goulandris Foundation attempts to highlight the work and career of the artist. After all, Elise and Vasilis Goulandris had early on recognized the work and talent of Panayotidis by including his work in their collection as early as the mid-1980s.

Nakis Panagiotidis is a self-taught, deeply educated and politically aware artist. In Turin he came into contact with the Arte Povera movement where he also exhibited his own experimental works for the first time in 1971, in a group exhibition held at the Piemonte Artistico Culturale centre.

Panayiotidis’ work is multifaceted and continues to evolve. Indicatively, in the 1980s he experimented with an archaic realistic collage technique, using materials such as crumpled wrapping paper, aluminium foil and tar. This is a coupling of Arte Povera, where prehistoric primary situations are revived, with the impersonal language of the media used by Pop Art. Later, he combines photography with neon, seeking a method to breathe life into the photographic reflection of reality.

In the most recent phase of his work, paintings dominate, but not in the conventional sense of the term: in 2017-18 he began to work with image-text, a process of pasting on large surfaces written messages that provide food for thought. During the pandemic he focuses on landscapes and interiors, creating images that manage to be inherently luminous without external lighting.

Something that preoccupies Panagiotidis throughout his work is the concept of time, which he perceives as flow and pause, as moment and eternity. Similarly, it is his belief that a complete work of art can never be fully perceived from a fixed perspective. Life and death, hubris and futility dominate as themes in his work, while his aim is to rediscover Greek myths to show that historical events may change, yet existential conflicts remain the same.

The exhibition is accompanied by a luxurious bilingual catalogue. In addition to the works in the exhibition, the 252 pages of the catalogue include photographs of the artist’s studies and drawings as well as a presentation of his artistic career.

During the exhibition “Nakis Panayotidis – Shut your Eyes and See” there will be guided tours for the public and creative workshops for children.

Information:

Curated by:  Fleurette Karadonti, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the B&E Goulandris Foundation, Matthias Frehner, Former Director of the Kunstmuseum Bern