Nikos Kanarelis' solo exhibition Nothing as it seems when time stands still presents paintings and drawings from the period 2020-2024. It activates imagination, an inner consciousness and an embodied vision. His paintings capture the non-obvious and the unseen in the stillness of time. Drawing on the philosophy of Walter Benjamin it reminds us of absence and the inexpressible.

The works resemble a series of stills (such as ghost-like figures, female figures and pillows), the fragments of a story that convey a strange sense of absence and a suspended state between the «before» and the «after», connection and disconnection. They depict a frozen moment that has duration and steps outside the flow of time, transcending it to capture a sense of the eternal.

Paintings such as Ghost which shows a standing, seemingly walking figure, The Witch depicting a female figure with her back turned to the viewer and her gaze directed towards a wall therefore alluding to a representation within representation (as in Velazquez's La Meninas ), The Bed with its crumpled sheets and the imprints of human presence and movement on the creases of the pillows (a reference to Dürer's Pillow Studies), Hug featuring a dreaming reclining female figure extending her arms into an empty embrace, all create (mental) spaces within spaces, a vibration of polarities, ambiguities and paradoxes while also capturing a feeling of déjà vu. These works draw the viewer into a sensory perception of the two-dimensional image and also trigger off different moods and states such as melancholy, anticipation, humour and introspection, distance and proximity.

In his paintings, Nikos Kanarelis captures the peculiarities of the modern era, touching on social issues such us social fragmentation and the lack of historical consciousness. At the same time, he explores the function of painting today and its dynamic in shaping history. Often intertextual, his works also engages conceptually with the great tradition of painting (as in his solo exhibitions The public gets what the public wants [2009] and Déjà Vu [2005]) and transforms historical styles and techniques into a contemporary visual language. He also uses the motif of the fold – for example on the clothes or the pillows series – as both a visual rhythm and as a metaphor for the multiplicity of unity.

A feeling of silence and absence - so delicately rendered in the close-ups of random details in the black and white drawings of the series Quite Life 2014 as enabling greater awareness pervade his compositions and are combined with a suggestion of sleep or dreaming as a condition where the invisible becomes visible: in Ghost the covered figure fills the painting’s foreground as if attempting to step out into the real world - in the cropped, close-up scene Flowers the floral patterns of the dress outlining a female figure sparks off seemingly unconnected remembrances in an associative, non-linear narrative.

In addition to cinematic techniques, Kanarelis also uses performative practices (as his work at the solo exhibition Νothing is Real but the way I feel, 2020) staging performances in his studio and photographing instances of it which are then transposed into paintings.

Kanarelis weaves a journey through time and the inner self, into a constant sense of becoming but also into a timeless, magical and inclusive moment that enables a critical interpretation of of the past and the present and help inspire a promising future.

Alexandra Koroxenidis
Art Historian - Curator of the exhibition