A drawing of yesterday for today

A solo exhibition by Nikos Kaskouras

ALMA Trikala: 3/3/22 - 2/4/22 Athens CURATED BY Manos Stefanidis, Niovi Kritikou TEXT BY Manos Stefanidis, Niovi Kritikou TRANSLATION BY Niovi Kritikou PARTICIPANTS Nikos Kaskouras

Exhibition Catalogue

Portrait,
Acrylics on canvas,
120 x 170 cm,
2019

Nikos Kaskouras captures everyday life moments, which he conveys through an intense deduction process. He draws inspiration from the Greek locality, cultural tradition of Cycladic art, the movement of American abstract expressionism and the action painting of J.-M. Basquiat and G. Bazelits. He invites the spectator to confront existential questions, as his rapidly sketched shapes capture the ephemeral and fleeting in a perpetual game of repetition. Anthropocentric representations are apparent translating into his perception of smooth emotions. His forms are barely moving and his postures are suggestive. Its cruciform writing is reminiscent of a weaving grid, which sometimes entangles indefinitely, holding us captive whilst others untie, leaving a veil of transparency and breath. His colors move among gradations of black and white, while simultaneously some intense revolutionary color may participate to break the monotony. His sculptures, structurally solid, are trying to capture the essence of the figures, like a monocotyledon. The perspective of N. Kaskouras becomes deeply sympathetic to the socio-political hardships that people experience, -marginalized or not. His point of view embraces and unites. Lurking symbols, such as the circle, reveal exactly the problem that concerns him, leaving conceptual extensions in the viewer's perspective.

Niovi Kritikou January 2022 Historian of Art / Artist

Embrace,
Acrylics on canvas,
120 x 150 cm,
2019

Sky,
Acrylics on canvas,
125 x 150 cm,
2019

By drawing all the desperation all day, I try to planish my armor, but the night keeps coming and finds me unarmed. M.S. Nikos Kaskouras is a very optimist painter of hopelessness. He may be considered as a minimalist from the way he simplifies great concepts, he is the one that consciously returns in the origins, in the minimum size and into the nothingness that can easily refer to everything.

Fence,
Acrylics on paper,
50 x 35 cm,
2019

He insists that art, in this case painting, before it becomes a phantasmagory or a premium decorative, it was and always will be the expression of the inner drama, the way that all the mortal creatures can claim the immortality of their souls. By one single line, a simple form, one color – trace or a shading – writing on a white surface. Like a bottle thrown into the open sea. With its message illegible and blind, his addressee. (I refer to the desperation that I hinted above). After all, there is this fear above the timeline and by that, I mean death… that can easily transform to a victory. Because the words and the images can save us… Still.

Human 2,
Acrylics on paper,
50 x 70 cm,
2019

P.s. Afterwards, there are also his sculptures. Figurines on the bench of crisis. The time of the decline of figurines. Small monuments of vanity of the monuments. How look alike do they seem? As the plaster of every Meander that Kariotakis watched over the ceiling of his misery and the moron barba-Gianoulis was working feverishly at Pyrgos’ Tower of Tinos Island. (The day that Alekos Fasianos was buried. That same day, in 2005, died also Giannis Pappas the sculptor).

Manos Stefanidis January 2022 Professor of Art History / Art Critic