present pendulum

The solo exhibition present pendulum by Niko Abramidis &NE explores a mythology of the present marked by artistic analysis, comic-like exaggeration, and a hopeful aesthetic. Following the euphoria for entrepreneurship and financial economics that characterized his installation works of recent years, his new paintings, drawings, and objects outline a reflection on the status quo of a hybrid reality and a pause in the face of an open future. They propose a deconstruction of the old world order and question the promise that technology and progress will solve all human problems. Great attention is paid to the medium of drawing in order to express the fragility of this liminal state and to emphasize immediacy, sensitivity, and poetics. Based on the concept of „metamodernity“1 , Niko Abramidis &NE‘s current works create visual worlds of an undecided future, oscillating like a pendulum between utopia and dystopia, in search of a new equilibrium. The exhibition presents two new large-format canvases based on charcoal drawings by Niko Abramidis &NE. The compositions each combine different time horizons in the surface to create a visionary-fictional narrative in which allegorical beings interact with each other. In those in the know (2024), the protagonist Oldfashioned-A, who stands for old values such as modernity, finds himself at a crossroads where foreign manipulative forces are at work. In focus warriors (2024), Niko Abramidis &NE presents a larger-than-life snake next to him with a globe in its glowing eyes as a symbol of globalization and the new economies associated with it. In these pictorial worlds, the individual protagonists embody values and systems, whereby they cannot be clearly divided into good and evil, thus making it possible to depict the increasing complexity of a global world, its crises and markets. The characters, reminiscent of comic figures, are worked out in the sharp-edged drawing style typical of the artist, which allows the symbolic content to come to the fore in the simplicity of the execution. In the Cryptic Machine Prototypes series by Niko Abramidis &NE, languages and technologies from different times seem to meet and form an archaeology of the future. The artist lasers sharp-edged cut-outs into the raw steel surfaces, which are distorted in perspective or even appear fractured out. Colored light penetrates through their openings, as well as fragments of text and screens that hint at possible functions as automatons, but whose modes of operation are obscured. The integrated videos play with the aesthetics of image films with romanticized shots of nature that are reminiscent of greenwashing campaigns by large companies. These are repeatedly interrupted by program sequences with source texts in which well-known figures from Niko Abramidis &NE‘s graphic cosmos can be recognized as images made up of punctuation marks in so-called ASCII art. This digital sign language served as the basis for today‘s emojis. The artist thus illustrates how new (digital) language forms are constantly overlapping, building on each other and leading to new communication systems and visual languages. The short text messages such as “Cover Blow”, “Do the Trick” or “Strong Belief” are reminiscent of catchy advertising slogans and thus once again provide open-ended references to the fictitious or former functions of these machines. For his exhibition, Niko Abramidis &NE has designed a narrative installation with the neon light work Sage Serpent and the neo classic table with accessories for temporary unreachable poetic dialogue (both 2024). Papers with drawings and notes are scattered on the walls and floor in an impossible attempt to decipher the present. As if fallen out of time, the installation illustrates an ongoing work process in which research and accumulations of material overlap. As if the work had just been interrupted for a brief moment, the receiver of an old marble telephone with a rotary dial lies on the small bistro table. The artist shows a bygone analog working world in which, however, a conversation is taking place over the telephone that may be able to bridge the distance to another time. In the RSRCH PNL series of works (2023-2024), Niko Abramidis &NE combines elements from the cosmos of his fictional financial worlds to create new narrative images, cycles and strategic plans. Seemingly like pinboards or magnetic boards made of silver-sprayed wood with attached drawings and relics of the old economy, he makes his “research” visible. In RSRCH PNL (Hydra Time) (2024), the heads of a Hydra look in different directions, alluding to the different time axes of past, present and future. A small head on the left also wears a wristwatch like a necklace, which literally points to its attachment to the present time. The fight against the Hydra, which is constantly growing new heads, is just as futile as the fight against time. The work illustrates how wisdom and knowledge are tied to time as a fundamental resource through which know-how can be acquired and passed on or lost.