Nakis Panayotidis

Shut your Eyes and See

27.11.2024 - 02.03.2025

The Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens unravels all the different aspects of the work of Greek-born, international artist Nakis Panayotidis at the retrospective exhibition “Nakis Panayotidis – Shut your Eyes and See” that will run from November 27, 2024 to March 2, 2025.

Fleurette Karadontis, President of the Board of the B&E Goulandris Foundation as well as Matthias Frehner, former Director of Kunstmuseum Bern, are the exhibition’s curators.

The exhibition is under the auspices of the Embassy of Switzerland in Greece.

Nakis Panayotidis’ work is defined by experimentation, unorthodox materials and unusual techniques. He is known for his photographic depictions of industrial landscapes and seascapes, visuals containing words, three-dimensional sculptural objects and installations that address philosophically existential questions from antiquity to the present. His designs and constructions are controversial while his indifference regarding technique is a strategic choice: Panayotidis believes that technique stands in the way of any vision that goes beyond established conventions and expectations.

A self-taught artist, as he did not graduate from any school of fine arts, Panayotidis grew up in Kypseli and went to Turin when he was 19 to study architecture. While in Turin he quickly became part of the young artists community and became acquainted with the Arte Povera movement. It was in Turin that he also first presented his own experimental works, in 1971, as part of a group exhibition held at the Piemonte Artistico e Culturale center.

From the very beginning, Panayotidis applied the subversive strategies of his revolutionary contemporary artists, whom he mingled with in Turin, Rome and later in Bern. Rejecting the traditional concept of art, he developed his own conceptual coordinates as an artist and used the symbolic power of materials that, until then, had not been used in art. His work is defined by irony and subversion, embellished at times with other qualities such as rage, rebelliousness, provocation, euphoria as well as uncertainty, melancholy and fear.

There are many sides to Panayotidis’ work, which keeps evolving. Indicatively, in the ‘80s he experimented with an archaically realistic collage technique, using materials such as crumpled wrapping paper, aluminum foil and tar; it is the meeting point of Arte Povera – where prehistoric primary situations are revived – and the interpersonal language of the media used by Pop Art. Later, he combined photography with neon, seeking a way to give breath to the photographic reflection of reality.

His recent work is dominated by paintings, but not in the conventional sense: in 2017-2018 he started experimenting with visuals containing words, a process of glueing written messages that give food for thought on large surfaces. During the pandemic, he focused on landscapes and interiors, creating images that manage to be inherently bright without external lighting.

Throughout his career, Panayotidis has been exploring the concept of time, which he perceives as flow and pause, moment and eternity. At the same time, he firmly believes that a complete work of art can never be fully understood from a fixed point of view. Life and death, hybris and vanity prevail in his work, while he seeks to rediscover Greek myths, to show that historical events might change yet existential conflicts remain the same.

Nakis Panayotidis lives and works in Bern, Switzerland.

As part of the exhibition “Nakis Panayotidis – Shut your Eyes and See”, guided tours, creative workshops for children, and specially designed parallel wellbeing activities and activities for the elderly will be held.

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Under the auspices of the Embassy of Switzerland in Greece

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