Electa publishes, in a bilingual edition, the catalogue of works by the artist Nakis Panayotidis for an exhibition in Genoa.
Genoa played host, from 8 March to 21 April 2003, to a solo show by the artist Nakis Panayotidis, presenting a selection of 20 works: from dream voyages that begin with the camera in outdoor locations, to places reinvented in the atelier. The artist’s biography and work cannot help but remind us of the figure of the voyager par excellence: Odysseus. Born in Athens in 1947, trained in Turin in the early 1970s, in the socially committed climate of Arte Povera, he set off to visit the tomb of Bakunin in Switzerland, and stayed there. His “photographic megaconstructions” feature old mines, abandoned factories, important port cities enlivened by sequences of neon tubes: a light bulb shining against tarred canvas dimly illuminates silhouettes of tables, chairs, beds cut out of lead sheet, reconstructing the sparsely furnished spaces dense with odors and sounds of the poor houses of Piraeus, with an emotionally charged minimalism bordering on the conceptual. Though utilizing black and white photography, the works in the exhibition have the sun as their soul, the fire as their experience.