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About the artist

Nikos Markou (Athens, 1959) studied mathematics at the University of Athens but has been working as a photographer artist since 1980. He has had fifteen solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in Greece and abroad, has participated in over sixty group shows and has won awards and distinctions in photography contests. The oeuvre of Nikos Markou has been published in two monographs: Geometries, texts by Costis Antoniadis & Olga Daniilopoulou, (Adam, 2000) and COSMOS, text by Iraklis Papaioannou (tetarto, 2004).

About the exhibition

Photographer Nikos Markou selects spaces which he defines as a personal "Topos" — a private point of reference.

His Topos of urban or other decontextualized landscapes leads towards a clear or unclear horizon which renders them deliberately finite. The human presence is either nonexistent or merely hinted at—but its impact is all too visible: pollution, environmental destruction, deterioration of nature, distortion of the physiognomy of the place. In the images of Athens, degradation has evolved into an everyday experience, but similar elements can be discerned out of town, such as the half-sunken ship that dissects the horizon and the sea in Eleusis. Even the lotus flowers in the Corinthian landscape hint at the loss of memory more than at blossoming and bounty.

Here the photographer aims to generate a semi-objective impression as he invisibly intertwines natural and artificial elements. His “topos” is constructed via the framing of his chosen subject.