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Becoming a New Entity
Niko Abramidis &NE | NExECON -
Niko Abramidis &NE (*1987 in Europe, lives and works in Munich and Berlin, DE) opens up a diverse spectrum dealing with economic structures and visions of the future. Within his drawings, paintings, sculptures and room installations, Niko Abramidis &NEs develops parallel universes in which he creates fictitious corporate identities and appropriates forms of expression from financial economics. This also includes the play with words through signs, symbols and ciphers, via which he transfers his artistic ideas of myth and literary fiction. The artist develops a semiotics of archaic symbols paired with sketchy drawings, which he puts together using the latest technologies.
This Viewing Room combines works from the solo show NExECON with further information and thus provides a playful insight into the New Entity.
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"Niko Abramidis &NE is an enterprising entity – a locus for a conflation of cryptography, mythology and symbology, the dry sterility of corporate aesthetics, fashion, modernism and postmodernism, material and immaterial speculation, space travel, as well as skeuomorphism, virtual reality, and other aspects concerning all that is digital."
– Chris Fitzpatrick, former director Kunstverein München (2017)
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1. Calculate Possibilities
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As if from some kind of strategic corporate management plan, large, machine-like works from Niko Abramidis & NE's series of Cryptic Machine Prototypes, initiated in 2018, hang on the walls. The raw steel surfaces, from the openings of which colored light emerges, as well as symbols, screens and pinpads, indicate possible functions as machines or control elements, the functionality of which has disappeared or at least is no longer understandable. The integrated videos play with the aesthetics of image films from banks and companies that have long gone insolvent. The images of nature, broken by fading in a code, are reminiscent of greenwashing campaigns by large companies.
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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In the Cryptic Machine Prototypes, symbols and technologies from different times seem to collide, creating an archeology of the future that can no longer be deciphered. With an ironic eye, Niko Abramidis & NE designs prototypes of machines from other times and places them in the present with an archaeological patina. With these works, the artist distorts comprehensible time horizons and thus refers to the economic processes of our time that have become impenetrable due to their complexity.
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"As an artist I am an entrepreneur. In that sense, I see my artistic work as corporate culture. The suffix &NE indicates that I am not a private person, but that I act as part of a larger entity. My decisions therefore always depend on the strategy of the management".
– Niko Abramidis &NE
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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2. Be Optimistic
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Niko Abramidis &NEs works on canvas reflect the shapes and symbols of the Cryptic Machine Prototypes on pastel colored backgrounds and merge the past and future, reality and fiction, technologies and symbols of past high cultures. The embroidery motifs are reminiscent of emblems that Abramidis combines with pictographic symbols from the economy such as triangles, graphs and arrows as well as with mythological icons such as pyramids, eyes and suns. This creates abstract landscape images, which with their recesses form light counterparts to the dark Cryptic Machines. Abramidis & NE uses embroidery machines to transfer his sketches onto canvases that have previously been treated with spray paint. As in the transfer by the N-Machine pen plotter in the N-Machine Drawings, the character of the drawing should remain visible, but should keep its own inherent character through the translation processes of digitization and duplication.
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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Truly wonderful!
Here I now sit,
Near the desert and yet
So far from the desert again,
And in no way desolate– Friedrich Nietzsche, Dionysos-Dithyramben (1891)
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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3. Operate smoothly
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The Strategist (2018) is an actor from the artistic universe of Niko Abramidis & NE. The comic-like animal figure consists of an aluminum plate, stuck in a brick-like stone base. The Strategist is decorated with many well-considered details and elements referring to his function. Not only is its appearance reminiscent of the knight's chess piece, but also the small tower next to it refers to one of the oldest strategy games in history. On the top of the tower, of which the crown acts as an ashtray, lies a cigar ready to smoke. Underneath the creature's tail is a Financial Times paper, one of the leading international business newspapers. All these elements combined paint the picture of a person who studies every movement in the markets carefully and knows how to take auspicious measures through knowledge and calculation. In the amalgamation of an animal appearance with human attributes, there are also humorous, fabulous attributions.
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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"His practice is mystical, and it’s ironic, but he is being serious."
- Chris Fitzpatrick, former director Kunstverein München (2017)
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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Portfolio Manager 1 (2018) embodies a specialist of investment decisions. Similar to the Strategist, the comic-like figure with raised hands resembles a cardboard stand that is stuck in a brick-like stone base. On top of the figure lies a smartphone that, like an attribute, refers to the manager's prowess. At the same time, this property is turned into something comically absurd, as the screen of the mobile phone has been painted over with color and it has lost all functionality. A recurring motif in Niko Abramidis & NE's work complex is etched into the middle of the body over a large area, the “multi-hand”. It is reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs or a multi-tool and stands for the optimization of people within a capitalist society. Posing dynamically, the portfolio manager 1 pierces a stack of paper with his right hand, on which possible investment objects are drawn, which can be read as a reference to the merciless strategies of investment advisors. In a humorous way, Niko Abramidis & NE presents the investment manager close to a caricature of himself.
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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A raw stone slab forms an archaic-looking conference table: on the Alpha Conference Table (2020) petrified tablets and symbolic objects of a supposed work reality are lying on the tabletop. A lens-shaped screen is embedded in the middle of the stone table, around which the symbols N, Ω and Σ seem to be carved like the four cardinal points. Due to the convex curvature of the monitor, the video, which shows cryptic formulas, is distorted and at the same time evokes a magic ball that can tell the future.
With Alpha Conference Table, Niko Abramidis & NE translates our meeting culture into a world in which not a community, but a manager directs the company's fortunes. Adjacent to a single empty coffee cup lies the tablet Trade Secret (2016), on the screen of which a reptilian creature is drawn, marching in front of pyramids and a skyline of the future. This perspective, in which a futuristic aesthetic is combined with ancient styles – here the pyramid with the high-rise buildings – can also be described more precisely by the term "future archaeology".
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Niko Abramidis &NE
Big Roll 1 $, 2018Cash is disappearing from our everyday lives, being increasingly replaced by digital payment methods. The former importance and advantages of cash have now become anachronistic in times of transparent people and online banking. Unlike cashless payment methods, however, banknotes absorb traces of everyday life during the course of their circulation and are individual testimonies of their users. The wad of money embodies our national economy and is a symbol of wealth and power.
The works in the Big Roll series not only serve as static objects with the side effect of metaphorically satisfying the basic human need to “sit on money”. This obvious representation of money dares the viewer to envisage the unimaginable sums of money of the economic crisis and the immense sums that are still tied up in complex financial systems.
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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4. Only invest in vision
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"Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind!"
– Bertold Brecht, Of poor B.B. (1921)
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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Niko Abramidis & NE's N-Machine Drawings are created from scanned drawings that are transferred with the help of an old pen plotter. With this technique, the artist developed an efficient system for the organization and further processing of spontaneous sketches by the computer without losing the personal lines of a hand drawing. The N-drawing machine thus functions as the artist's extended arm – an apparatus that always draws with the same concentration: “Machines help me with my work. The translation by the machine creates a new level of abstraction. I change the author's role and start deciphering my own work with the graphics program. It is a translation with changes. The spontaneous hand drawing is engineered.” In the exhibited works, Niko Abramidis & NE combines individual elements from the cosmos of his fictional financial world, thereby creating new narrative images, cycles and strategic plans. As if checked or commented on with a marker, the works on paper also have green symbols. RFID chips on the drawings connect the artist's analog and digital work cosmos and can be read by scanning with a smartphone.
Photos: Dirk Tacke
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Blitz Blanko Invest, 2020
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Blitz Blanko Invest (2020) is a semi-transparent curtain showing parts of a greatly enlarged € 500 bill, which, when divided and mirrored, builds an almost symmetrical image. The motif of a bridge extends across the entire width, showcasing towers, in the form of Europe, in the center. On the top of this bridge, conflicting with the principles of modern architecture, stand two pyramids: non-reconstructable structures of an ancient high culture that seem to be able to survive any crisis.
From both sides of the bridge, lightning bolts ignite the surroundings, threateningly extending over the world below, as if from an unknown, mystical source. This mix of mystical symbols, supernatural power and the adaptation of the Euro allude to the current state of the financial economy, which, due to its impenetrable structures, is unfathomable to comprehend, and can only be believed. Like a protective curtain and at the same time with a threatening motif, Blitz Blanko Invest hangs in the entrance of the gallery and raises questions about a common Europe beyond a cohesive monetary union.Photo: Dirk Tacke
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Niko Abramidis &NE
Ancient Entities, 2020The starting point for all of Niko Abramidi's & NE's ideas are drawings depicting comic-like and spontaneous actions, creatures, symbols, surrealistic scenes or set pieces from sterile company identities. The 7-part selection of A4 drawings suggests a fictional company history that humorously outlines company structures and board members. Transhuman CEOs are portrayed, important meetings are recorded, company logos and buildings are shown. “My hand drawings hover between virtuosity and apparent primitiveness. When I draw, especially for longer periods, I become free, I can penetrate into another world, let things just come.” Niko Abramidis & NE's daily drawings on A4 paper are independent works and at the same time the basis for further works, some of which with the help of technical devices – such as the work of Strategist and Portfolio Manager 1 – are transferred.
Photo: Dirk Tacke
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"Abramidis &NE develops a cryptography of the present: a gay science of turbocapitalism."
– Georg Imdahl, ars viva Katalog 2019
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A large-format screen forms the tabletop of the Agenda Table (2020), which shows aerial photographs of places on the basis of which the artist tries to visualize the movements of cash flow. In his installations, Niko Abramidis & NE repeatedly falls back on the desk as the place where ideas, negotiations and strategies arise. The subtitle of this work (Muc-Manila) refers to two central locations that form the scenes of the financial scandal surrounding the company Wirecard and are the focus of this work – Munich and Manila. Abramidis & NE visualizes the complex scandal involving missing billions and falsified bank documents – a dubious company network, possibly corrupt officials and an ex-manager on the run – by driving around the alleged locations using Google Earth. In Munich, for example, you can see the company's headquarters in the anonymous industrial park of Aschheim and the Central Business District of Manila in the Philippines.
Video: Agenda Table (Akropolis – NYC), 2018
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Niko Abramidis & NE integrates classic furnishings in his expansive installations, creating a fictional office atmosphere that reflects the efficiency of the financial world in a humorous way. The tapestry Ancient Decision Maker (2020), covered in a printed marble surface and various symbols, is reminiscent of noble trading house floorings of bygone times. In earlier trading metropoles such as Florence and Venice, expensive marble inlays – showing the house's coats of arms and other symbols – was an expression of power and success. Niko Abramidis & NE utilizes industrial production techniques to transfer this expression of domination into the present, thus referring to the power of symbolism, which is still perceptible today. The resulting skeuomorphism, in which a familiar object is imitated by another material or form without being justified by a function, appears repeatedly in the artist's works.
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Niko Abramidis &NE
biography -
Niko Abramidis &NE studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Julian Rosefeldt and Markus Oehlen and at the Berlin University of the Arts with Byung-Chul Han. He is co-founder of the art space easy!upstream, which he artistically directed from 2015-2018. In 2018, he was awarded the prize for visual arts, which is awarded annually by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V. This was followed by group exhibitions in 2019 at the Kunstmuseum Bern and at KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation in Düsseldorf. He also received an artist-in-residency grant on Fogo Island, Canada.
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"The haptic, material, transforming, crazy, confusing and imaginative nature of art is all the more important today. It helps people to remain free. It fights against stagnation, the repetition of the ever-same. For me, art is not another facet of the capitalized event world, but poetic."
– Niko Abramidis &NE
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→ to the artist's page
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Depot
Selection of available works | Click on the photos for more information -
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Cryptic Machine Prototype Ω1, 2020
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Cryptic Machine Prototype N5, 2020
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Global Desert 2, 2020
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Green Hydra, 2020
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Secret Prospector, 2020
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Portfolio Manager 1, 2018
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Alpha Conference Table, 2018/2020
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Niko Abramidis &NE, Big Roll 1 $, 2018
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5. Shine your Shoes
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