About the artist
About the exhibition
In his solo exhibition “Inner Space” at CITRONNE Gallery, Nikos Markou presents a new photographic series as sequel to his show “Monumenta Naturalia” (2012).
Nikos Markou observes, composes and records the "cosmos"—a Greek term whose etymology and evolution over time gives it various interpretations: universe or outer space but also embellishment, humanity, space... In this latest series the photographs on display record and make up a testimony that reflects an inner world; an "Inner Space". The artist "stages" his photographs as composite "landscapes". They depict from the inside the gloom of night, the light of day, the omnipresent nature on Earth as in heaven. They represent the "cosmos", but it is a fictitious, constructed cosmos. The viewer is the receiver who is called upon to decode a photographic language which may be often arcane but is always open to mental associations.
To this end, Nikos Markou uses "objets trouvés", i.e. random elements such as rocks, earth, paper or marbles; he removes these objects from their context, appropriates them, modifies them, stages them and finally he photographs them. The result is a reality that is virtual, immobile and finite. It is a visual exercise between the natural and the artificial, derived from the photographer's own imagination.
The "Inner Space" series is presented at the CITRONNE Gallery as a dialogic sequel to his previous series "Topos" and "Nature Monuments". The exhibition features also a series of videos by Nikos Markou in which the moving image engages in dialogue with the photographs and functions as a link between the artist's latest and previous series of works.