DESTE AT ART ATHINA 2015
ART ATHINA
Friday, June 5, 2015 between 15:00-21:00
Saturday, June 6 & Sunday, June 7, 2015 between 12:00-21:00
Faliro Pavilion (TaeKwonDo Stadium)
The DESTE Foundation’s presence at the 20th edition of Art-Athina with Nikos Navridis’ installation Breath, is part of the foundation’s effort to present important works by Greek and international artists to a broader public and to promote radical developments in contemporary art practice.
In Breath, Nikos Navridis is inspired by Samuel Beckett’s 1969 play of the same name where the Irish playwright, based on theatrical minimalism, used breathing as the sole content of his work.
In his installation Nikos Navridis conveys in a poetic way the notion of breathing as it is expressed in Beckett’s play. The space of the installation is filled with videos projected on the floor to the accompaniment of intense sounds of breathing.
The projections on the floor present images of garbage that cross the stage quickly enough to appear like shapeless, fleeting expanses of color that form a kind of floor-mounted painting.
As visitors walk through the space they interfere with these luminous surfaces, disrupting their flow and thus experiencing a special, autonomous situation.
As the artist states: “I wanted the viewers to perceive the text with their body, their breathing, like Beckett’s breath, bringing to mind the constant game of life and the importance of the journey; another relation between events and time; something which, if it can last for 35 seconds, it can last forever”.
Breathing is the first autonomous gesture of human existence, and one of powerful energy. It is the simplest yet most eloquent way of describing life.
In the 35 seconds of the duration of Nikos Navridis’ work the visitor becomes integrated in the space and comes face-to-face with the pervasive sound of breathing as well his own breath as a manifestation of life, at the same time as his body freely and autonomously ‘moulds’ the surface on which the garbage is projected. Semantically, we could see this ‘moment’ as alluding to the finite, mortal nature of the human body which is inescapably condemned to decline and perish.
The project was first presented in the 51st Biennale of Venice in 2005.
Contributors:
Sound: Dimitris Kalatzis, Nikos Navridis; Photography: Sarantos Sakellakos; Image Processing: New Ideas Studio; Post Production: Μinds & Bytes; 3D Processing: Alexandros Arapantonis; Sound Processing: Studio 19; Technical Support: Makis Faros; Production: Theodora Grigori, Nikos Navridis
