Shortly before 2024 expires, the Municipal Gallery of Karditsa receives the works of the last donation of the year. These are two (2) works by the painter Nikos Economides.

Nikos Economides (1953) studied painting in Greece (at the workshop of G. Vogiatzis) and in England (Filton Technical College, Bristol and Slade School of Fine Arts, London). He has held many solo exhibitions and has also participated in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. He has collaborated in six (6) albums, in most of which his paintings are in conversation with poetic and other texts by various authors (and in one of them his own). He has also been involved in illustrating children’s books and covers. He lives and works in Halandri, Attica.

The painter, who had also donated his works in the past (2022), with his recent donation offers his compositions to the Municipal Gallery:

• I DO NOT DESPAIR, BUT I ORGANIZE MYSELF (2012, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 90 cm)
• ABSENCE (2008, mixed media & collage, 47 x 59 cm / from the poem of the same name by Yannis Kontos)

Along with these, the Gallery now has a total of five (5) of his works, a good sample of his work, indicative of his favourite themes and the specificity of his writing. Urban landscape and interior space, man together with the presence or absence of human proximity. Incidents and micro-stories. The artist’s favourite dialogue with poetic writing (‘illustration’ of the poems, as he calls it), to which he often returns. His gaze scrutinizes his subjects inquiringly. He focuses on the form, he sees the surface but also its interiority. He captures incidents in progress or panoramic shots composed of individual fragments of images, memories, thoughts, feelings, dreams. In his works, the visible, memory, thought, and emotional charges coexist. Aspects of an enriched reality, more complex and multi-layered, focused from alternative viewing angles. He tells his stories with filters of introspection, interiority and critical approach. Side by side, details, solitary figures embedded in the long shot and the great depth of field. Everything coexists. Signs and symbols. They complement each other or limit and make it relevant. A world fragmented with continuities and discontinuities. Representation and allusiveness. Performance fragmentary, abstract, often schematic or even grotesque. A playful look. Vibrant, glossy colours. A willingness to hold on to the optimistic version of things. Humour bitter, sarcastic, but not dramatic. The ellipticity of his writing gives concentrated visual stimulus that motivates the viewers’ personal interpretations.

The section with the works (older and more recent) of Nikos Economides offers comments on contemporary man, his everyday life, his concerns, his private and urban space. All topics of interest that the ICC wishes to negotiate and highlight through their conversation with other works in its art collection.