06/12/2019 – 06/01/2020

Atacama: a solo exhibition by Nikomachi Karakostanoglou-Boutari

Opening: Friday 6/12/2019
Private viewings of the exhibition with the artist: Saturday 7/12 between 16:00 and 20:00, and Wednesday 18/12 between 13:00 and 17:00.

The Atacama watercolors on paper are uplifting in their neutrality. Nikomachi’s original wash-out technique rises up to sub-divisions of indeterminate hues. The observation is filled with doubt: are the divisive lines across the frames open to osmosis? Can the perceived colors be clearly named? Still, despite the uncertainty, they emanate a sense of peace through their fading yet vibrant palette and supple over-layering.
Atacama resembles no other desert. Its low temperatures, at any given time of night or day, produce tints of pastel that create a unique sensorial experience. This barren land has captivated Nikomachi’s vision and has become a fertile ground for her work. Her latest collection, inspired by a recent art residency in Atacama desert and presented at @ISNOTGALLERY in Nicosia, deciphers the mythical immensity of the desert through her eyes.

As the artist mentions:
“I came back from the desert with my eyes filled of Atacama’s blinding light. It was so intense and powerful that I closed them and I started capturing the vibrations that I lived the past 30 days. I tried to enclose in the water with my transparent inks the energy of the sunset as I enjoyed it every afternoon at 19:19. I was very interested in the common place that occurs when energies, forms and colors meet.”

Nikomachi is a Greek artist, who studied sculpture and public art in London. She is based in Athens and has lived and worked for three years in Shanghai. Her style of work is minimalistic in form, but maximalistic in context. Her brushstroke is elliptical and laden with symbolism. Being a sculptress, her abstract drawings are sketches of almost imperceptible three-dimensional animate forms.

Nikomachi was born and raised in Athens. She studied Business Administration at the Athens University of Economics and Business. She pursued her studies in London where she attended the B.A. in Public Art at the Chelsea School of Art and the B.A. (Hons) inFine Art: Sculpture at the Wimbledon School of Art. During her studies she evolves the notion of “Sculpting Space”, a design concept that will unfold throughout her artistic career. In 1998 she founds her studio “SculptingSpace” where she starts to apply this philosophy on several design projects. In 2011 she departs for Shanghai. During her stay in Shanghai she works intensively on restaurant design and branding. Meanwhile she studies Chinese calligraphy through which she explores new forms of capturing water and transparency. Since her return from Shanghai she works exclusively on her drawings, challenging herself with the scale of her artworks and with the materials she has been collecting during her journeys in Asia.For Nikomachi notions like light, movement, frustrating rhythm of everyday life and silence consist the main inspiration of her art and design works.In March 2018 she held her first solo show at Martinos art gallery, as a curator and an artist. Recently she participated in the group show Forthcoming 2 at Space52. Finally she completed the art curation of Grand Hyatt Athens, a project where she played again a double role, this of the curator and the artist.

Yiannis Boutari, previous Mayor of Thessaloniki and wine producer, will be at the opening.