Subject

The artistic result I have produced over the past years represents an attempt to integrate contradictory elements into an autonomous organism, allowing individual balances to emerge at one and the same time between materials, textures and forms. It is, essentially, a 3-dimensional non-representational outcome incorporating/assimilating thematic, painting and sculpture elements.

Forms and plastic values arise from a destruction-reconstruction process that is clearly revealed, contrasting with later interventions which are 'clean' and decisive.

By sidelining representation, I aim to produce a subversive outcome by means of pure plastic media.

Materials

Recycling of materials, and occasionally personal objects, is based on their emotive nature, while the predominance of wood, organic and often rough, helps me create contrast with the rest of the materials. For example, new materials may be involved in the process, everyday objects, digital printings of processed images, photographs, anything, for that matter, that may seem useful at the time of creation.

Statement

Starting from the standpoint that art is a social good, rightfully accessible to all, and that intellectual property should be shared by all, I choose to exhibit my work in widely-accessible spaces and spots with a history of socio-political tension, avoiding haughty art stores, which go against the social role of art and are contrary to my personal attitude to life.

A society without art or art education cannot exist/is inconceivable, and it is unfair and culturally wasteful for art to be exclusively available to the financial oligarchy.

Groups

The beginning of my involvement in art in the early 80s was a personal challenge and a commitment to keep a critical stance on social and artistic stereotypes.

In this context, I have been a member of several artistic groups over the years, hoping for a greater diffusion of our common ideas and attitudes, and exhibiting the individual artwork of group members.

The goal of these groups is to create genuine, multi-faceted and unconventional presentations based on cooperation and exchange of views, banishing egotistic individualism and the toxic behaviors it entails, as well as to interact with society and everyday life. In this way, real incentives are provided to avoid social indifference towards modern art and the isolation of artists as peculiar social elements.

Giorgos Nouvakis

June 2017

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Series

I classify my works in series, which are determined by the subject, the material, but above all the genre and the mood of experimentation of each period. The boundaries are not always very clear, just as the classification is not so strict, but they help to understand the overall work.

Frames (2020-)

like picture frames, limits, prohibitions... The lines that traditionally enclose-restrict an image, but also our daily limitations, the frameworks within which we are obliged to live.

In the Frames series painting illusion collaborates with constructional reality. The frames limit, but the painting goes in and out between them, catalyzes them, negates them or almost accepts them. It uses frames as structural material or is made entirely of them, in an exaggeration that weakens them. The purpose is to reduce the frames [ ] to plastic symbols, in an effect where the painting mood alternates with the constructional geometry. (Athens 2022)

Triangles (2017-2019)

Αn attempt to create a subversive result by using triangular shapes.

Shipping Pallets (2010-13)

The series focuses into used wooden objects, mainly old shipping pallets. It concerns to an “invisible” element of the urban landscape of the city I live, something that can be viewed in every neighborhood, but nobody observes, due to the familiarity we acquire with the insignificant objects, and reduces them to indifferent. The material is let to narrate its story through volumes, empty spaces, textures and its own tonal and color gradations, con discreet interventions that respect this decision. Undoubtedly, the means, the motivation and the conclusions of this search, treat directly with the social sensibility and attitude of the times. (Athens 2012)

Clothes & Accessories (2008-2009)

Social comments using our clothes and everyday accessories as alibi.

Chairs (2002-2003)

Back to 2D painting and the favorite “chair” theme. Mostly oils on canvas. (Following part of the text from the solo exhibition "Síéntate", Barcelona 2003): “The return to two-dimensional painting -which I do not consider definitive- was a personal challenge, after many years of dedication to assemblages, installations and collages, a return loaded with the experience of previous works. At the same time, it brought back partially forgotten memories and experiences, which I tried to include. Although the chair was chosen as the theme, it is clear that these are more basic searches, based on the primary values of painting. If it were necessary to clarify, I would prefer a characterization between the limits of the representation and the abstract.”

FisHeads (2003-2008)

The series is about painting in three dimensions, in which a thematic outline contains my personal point of view on abstraction. This could be considered as an amusing plastic joke on a single theme: the balance, both thematic but also emotional between tradition and current reality, plenitude and void, volume and plane, and other individual relationships, is transformed into a "simple li'l fish" using a simple contour with references that bring comic art or naïf painting to mind. In this series digital images were employed, being juxtaposed to the harshness of an organic material -the wood - thus creating yet another contrast. Jokingly, we could speak about planned and premeditated confusion, but it could also be an example of how an "inaccessible" artistic practice can reach a wider public. This apparent, and sometimes provoking simplicity is not only loaded with a large dose of humor and irony, but also each end result carries its own social and political references: grotesque elements, slogans, phrases, song lyrics, references to other civilizations, artists and artistic practices, pictorial "errors", kitsch, graffiti, are just some of the ingredients of this dish of hot soup in which the "fish-heads" swim. (Barcelona 2006)

“art?WORKS!” (1995-2001)

Assemblages- sometimes Installation-Oriented, made mostly by old furniture and other recycled materials.