29 Feb – 10 Mar 2024
Armatolon ke Klefton 38, Athens, 114 71, Greece
AK38
Thu & Fri 19.00-22.00
Sat & Sun 12.00-18.00
“boyau” is the title of the latest photobook of Nikos Kachrimanis, published by futura publications. Its title is a French word from the military defensive terminology, encountered in the text of a testimony of his grandfather. A boyau is a small trench, typically made in a zigzag pattern and directed perpendicular to the enemy lines. It serves as a connection and communication trench between the rearguard and the front line. This work consists of an asynchronous dialogue between two linear narrations, one written and one visual. The written narration is the starting point of this dialogue, since it was composed a hundred years earlier, at the end of the Greek military expedition to Asia Minor. The dialogue takes place between two narrators that have never met each other, grandfather and grandson. The different positions of the narrators are expressed through this centennial time gap, both traversing and surpassing time. On p. 40 of the book “boyau”, we can see a blooming Japanese quince.
We see clarity glowing, to the point.
The red flowers and the drops of blood. The reeling beauty inside a scorched landscape. The red liquid spilled on the verge of life. The eternal second of a deafening pause, during the raging battle.
Sound composition: evi nakou
Curator: Thanos Makris
Nikos Kachrimanis was born in 1983 and is based in Athens, Greece. He studied Dentistry at the University of Athens (2007) and pursued his PhD Thesis in the field of Dental Biomaterials at the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin (2013). Actively practicing photography since 2002, he received his formal education in visual arts in 2016 when he attended the intensive course “Photography: Theory and Creative Practices” (Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece, 2016-2017). He is an independent photographer and collage-maker narrating stories: fairy tales, travel or crime stories, the 8 o’clock news, praising the poetry of the banal. His oeuvre has been shown online and has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Greece and Europe. Work of his is included in public and private libraries and collections, such as the Photographic Archives of Benaki Museum (Athens, Greece), the Gulbenkian Art Library (Lisbon, Portugal), Josef Chladek’s Bookshelf (Vienna, Austria) and the Photobook Museum (Köln, Germany). His self-publication “Divine Furies Trilogy” (2020) was shortlisted for the Kassel Dummy Award 2022. “Boyau”, published in 2022 by futura publications is his fourth photobook.