Pari Spinou
Not yet forty years old, Nikos Moschos is a painter with a dynamic “handwriting,” a recognizable idiom, and an intense presence both in Greece and abroad — and now, a retrospective exhibition has come to seal his artistic course.
In his hometown of Heraklion, at the Municipal Art Gallery/Basilica of Saint Mark, his exhibition “Marginally Human” was inaugurated by the Region of Crete and the Municipality of Heraklion, and will run until August 29.
The exhibition includes works created between 2012 and 2019 that are part of Greek and international collections, along with works being shown for the first time.
With his paintings, Nikos Moschos focuses on the relationship between humans, technology, and the internet era. As he points out, his painting does not serve as documentation, nor does he see himself as a journalist; rather, he “metabolizes the elements and stimuli of our time.”
Art historian Christoforos Marinos comments:
“Painting is, beyond a way of life, an ethical activity, and Nikos Moschos’s works demonstrate our relationship with the world. If we were to compile a vocabulary that conveys the aesthetics and the feeling his works exude, we would choose as the most representative the words ‘amalgam,’ ‘alloy,’ ‘maelstrom,’ ‘jumble,’ ‘crucible.’ Moschos’s painting — painting ‘at boiling point’ — raises philosophical questions: about violence, humanism, coexistence. The clash of forms in his paintings is directly related to the concept of posthumanism; that is, it can be read as a philosophical confrontation about the future of humanity.”
Nikos Moschos was born in 1979 in Heraklion, Crete. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he now lives and works. He has held solo exhibitions: in 2016 at the SWAB Art Fair (Barcelona) with ENA Contemporary Gallery; in 2013 at Art Athina with Gallery Penindaplinena; in 2012 at Xippas Gallery (Athens); in 2010 at Galerie Theorema (Brussels), among others. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Greece, such as at the Benaki Museum and the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, as well as abroad (Genoa, Istanbul, Vienna, Brussels, Beijing, among others).
Info: Municipal Art Gallery of Heraklion, Crete. Until August 29. Opening hours: Monday–Friday 09:00–14:00 and 17:00–21:00; Saturday 09:00–14:00; closed on Sundays. As part of the exhibition, a catalogue of the works will be published, with texts by art historian Christoforos Marinos and Emeritus Professor of Classical Archaeology James Wright.