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Nikos Alexiou (Greek: Νίκος Αλεξίου; 1960 – 25 February 2011, Athens) is a Greek artist who specialized in visual art, contemporary art, installation art and set design for theatre and dance. He exhibited his work at personal exhibitions and group events both in Greece and abroad. Alexiou lived in central Athens until his death from cancer at the age of 51.
In 1982, at the age of 22, Alexiou moved to Austria to study at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. Two years later, he returned to Greece to study at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
Career
Alexiou received recognition for his work as set designer for Medea (Dimitris Papaioannou, (1993) and for The End (installation, 2007). The End was selected as the Greek contribution to the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Events
23rd Biennale of Alexandria, 2005.
Outlook and the Athens by Art exhibitions, 2004 Athens Olympic Games and 2004 Cultural Olympiad
Free Transit, Spain, 2003, Zappeion, Greek Presidency of the EU.
Deste Prize, 2003 (Deste foundation, Greece)
Contemporary and visual art
In 1985, Alexiou held his first personal exhibition at "Desmos" Gallery in Athens. He used basic materials and those commonly found in nature such as rock, wood, mud and water. In 1987, Alexiou continued his experimentation with natural features by venturing into their decomposition. He created Prisms, a series of works which analyzes the projection of white light into different spaces, even through rain. Alexiou later created Solar Houses, minimalistic constructions of cane and reeds which share a fragile feeling of absolute geometry. Alexiou said, he was creating "an imaginable garden pavilion". Other works in this genre include: San Marco di Venezia, The Gate, and Fountain.
The End
In 2007, Vassilika Sarilaki, an art historian, interviewed Alexiou regarding his participation in the Venice Biennale.She wrote,
"A master of space and the sense of the borderline, Nikos Alexiou, an artist known for his delicate works and motifs, his paper embroidered with perforations and his frugal constructions, will be representing Greece at this year’s Venice biennale.""The title of this year’s biennale, (2007) which will be held between June 10 and mid November, is “Think with the senses -- feel with the mind. Art in the present tense”, and, Nikos Alexiou’s sensuous installation seems to get to the very heart of the matter. Starting out with the wonderful motifs in the floor mosaics of the Oberon monastery, which he reproduces in endlessly varying colours and designs to articulate an ecstatic world of beauty and moderation. His is a ‘structured chaos’ which balances the geometric nature of the material with the spontaneity of gesture.""Alexiou’s work emerges once more not as a product of a prefabricated idea, but as the source of an all-embracing gift to the beauty of forms. As a product and an engagement of his bodily devotion to it. And it is this which ultimately bestows a natural grace and an aura of redemption on the work.""Alexiou means tradition in the sense ascribed to it by Husserl. That “painting’s past creates a tradition in the artist, a duty to start over differently; not survival, which is the hypocritical form of forgetfulness, but effectual reclamation, which is a noble form of memory.” It is this “reclamation of memory” through the experience of familiarity that he attempts to convey today, though he allows the viewer to see the work unfettered and to lose themselves in the ecstasy of the small, psychedelic world it proposes; a world dotted with coloured motifs which flow in space, with tender sketches of the monastery and intricate digital labyrinths on video.""Taken together, the recollective designs, the fragmentary motifs moving imperceptibly on video, constantly changing shape, and the intricate patterns suspended in mid air define a new aesthetic world open to the imagination, to experience, to the viewer’s “individual breath”, and in so doing render largely relative the classical view of stability and the objectivity of space. Meaning the guise of material crops up again and again as a concept in Alexiou’s work as a pretext for taking a fresh look at our inner world and the way it is naturally reflected on the outside. And this might ultimately be art’s prime subject."
"What will the installation you will be showing at the Venice biennale include exactly, and how will it be structured?"
"What was it that moved you about this particular floor from the Iveron monastery? Were you just interested in its form, or were your personal experiences your starting point, given that you’ve been visiting the monastery since 1995?"
"But as I can see from the video, in a sense these designs function as a pretext for a 'meditative loss'"...
"It really is delightful. It reminds me of Arabic motifs..."
"Why did you entitle the work “The end”?"
"Which part of it?"
"And how do this state, these images, differ from pop art?"
"And with psychedelia?"
"Fine, but someone might wonder “Hey, how can he combine the floor from the Iveron monastery, which has its own particular experiences, octagonal cosmological symbols, mandalas, meditation and so on with a neo-pop or psychedelic idiom?"
"Apart from the obvious, is there any sort of concealment here? In your perforated curtains, for instance, through whose delicate fabric one sees and does not see?"
"Meaning you’re primarily interested in the surface. Does your work have a symbolic dimension?"
"I asked you if your work was related this time to symbols because these patterns are joined together into mandalas, which are cosmic symbols, but also because the masters of abstraction—Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich, Kupka, Itten—were closely bound up with the metaphysical and its symbolism. And that’s no accident..."
"I’m not using ‘metaphysical’ in the sense of ‘non-real’ or to convey a suspicious or negative connotation. It’s just that the geometric form is a symbol in itself. In this sense, it produces specific senses and ideas. For instance, there were the theosophical views of Mondrian, who defined the vertical as spirit and the horizontal as material, or the “spiritual component” of colours and shapes and what Kandinsky or Itten defined as geometrical harmony. That’s what I’m talking about. Do the traditional, archetypal motifs you use reference symbolisms, or not?"
"What do you mean exactly?"
"That reminds me of what Zen teaches about the experience of the ‘here and now’. You know that some people would refer to the minimal bamboo constructions you used to do as Zen constructions?"
"Do you think 21st-century art should return to the concept of the beautiful which came in for so much stick during the 20th?"
Set design
In his years at the Athens School of Fine Arts, Alexiou met Dimitris Papaioannou, a stage director, choreographer, and visual artist. At the time, Papaioannou was a fellow pupil. The two men became friends and worked together on various projects. In 1990, Alexiou proposed a collaboration, using his own work as a base for Papaioannou to work upon. The result was The Last Song of Richard Strauss, which later became The Songs trilogy. The Last Song, a success for Papaioannou and the Omada Edafous Dance Theatre company, demonstrated work in the genre of set design. In 1993, Alexiou again collaborated with Dimitris Papaioannou in the production of Medea for the "Omada Edafous Dance Theatre company".
Art collector
Alexiou began collecting art at a young age. In 2009, he curated an exhibition of his collection of works by 70 modern and contemporary artists at the Bazeos Tower in Naxos. The tower is a 17th-century tower that was built as a monastery. The collected artists included Adam Chodzko, Bernhard Cella, Amy O’Neill, Jim Shaw, Jimmie Durham, Andisheh Avini, Yuken Teruya, Antonis Kiriakoulis, Deanna Maganias, Giannoulis Chalepas, Elena Poka, Ilias Kafouros, Kostis Velonis, Dimitris Papaioannou, Mantalina Psoma, Emmanouil Zacharioudakis, Simon Periton, Marie Francoise Poutays, Mary Redmont, Michael Michaeledes, Minas, Spyros Litinas, Stephen Dean, Vasso Gavaisse, Lydia Venieri,Vangelis Vlahos and Yorgos Papountzis. The exhibition was an expression of the artistry of Alexiou (as much as his own work). The collected items paralleled his own development as an artist; the business of the final preparations of the exhibition reflected his passion; and the tower itself became an art subject itself in Alexiou's video productions of the day.
List of works
Alexiou participated a large number of personal and group exhibitions. There are works which were never exhibited or are not known to the public. (The following list is not complete; it depicts only a selection of his known works).
Anfiteatro na Doca, EXPO ’98, Lisbon, Portugal, (July 1998)
Theater De La Croix Rousse, 8th Biennale of Dance, Lyon, France, (14-18 September 1998)
Pattichio City Theater, Limassol, Cyprus, (September 1998)
City Theater, Nicosia, Cyprus, (September 1998)
Anderson Center for the Arts, Concert Theater, Binghamton University; Performing Arts Center, Albany University; The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, New York, USA, (9-16 October 1999)
Atatürk Kultural CentGrand Hall, 12th International Istanbul Theatre Festival, Istanbul, Turkey, (18 May 2000)
San Marino Stage Festival, San Marino, (August 2000)
1994–1995
"Memoria del Olvido", directed and choreographed by Denise Perdikidis, Teatro Olimpia de Madrid and tour in Germany, Switzerland, Festival de Teatro Clásico de Mérida, Dansa Valencia, Cabildo Insular de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, (1994).
"Suppliants - Aeschylus", directed by Stavros Doufexis, light design by Nikos Alexiou and Eleftheria Deco, Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, (1994).
"Medea - Euripides", directed by Giorgos Lazanis, set light and costume design by Nikos Alexiou, Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, (1995).
2007–2010
"Το Αμάρτημα της Μητρός μου", directed by Kostas Kapelonis, Karolos Koun Theater of Art, (2007).
"Meet in Beijing", "Athens Festival", National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, (1 and 2 August 2008) and Pallas Theatre, Athens, (from 1 October 2008).
"Medea 2", Dimitris Papaioannou
"Schreber’s nervous illness", directed by Stelios Krasanakis, Alekton Theatre.
"La Puppe", directed by Anna Kokkinou, Theatre Sfendoni.
