CURVING THE WORLD - EXHIBITION VIEW

Curving the world - Exhibition View

N_Grams Solo Exhibition /
Sarri 12 Gallery /
Athens November 2016

In his first solo exhibition, Dimitris Naiplis (N_Grams) presents a compilation of his

twenty-year discourse in the realm of StreetArt. With a body of work that abstractly links

the phenomena of urban street art with the vastness of the universe at large, his pieces

document the repetitive choreography of deliberate acts, commonly dismissed as chaos.

He has presented his artistic work in numerous group shows within Greece and cultural

festivals around the Europe. N_Grams started with graffiti back in 1993,

with his former tag of “Naip” used only in Ptolemaida, when graffiti in Greece was still in a very early stage.

Street art, since then, is his main (but not exclusive) creative field, where his ideas become reality.

Always attracted by the streets, the direct communication and the unlimited possibilities that public space
can offer to a creator, he has created public artworks, unstoppable and with awareness.

His main purpose as an artist is continuous creativity and evolution.
In recent years, he has been experimenting with a wide range of materials, including:

newspapers, structural and construction materials, fabric, sprays, wood.

About the exhibition
The spray can become an identifiable and relatable symbol of the street artist.
Dissected, the world within can reveals the pressures that motivate it to explode and transform the world beyond it.
A philosophical exploration of a different theme, the morphology of materials and their transformative behaviors are explored: there is aninnate connection between all things in the material world, regardless of scale and form.
All matter is quintessentially of the same matter, and so the identity of materials are not bound to the current state of their existence. Fluidities in interpretation and context suggest a freedom to reshape the path ahead:
Curving the world away from where it may be headed.

Taxonomy
of technique conceptually
arranges the contents of this show:
Paint, engrave, sculpt, build, curve. Each group expresses various motifs that have evolved throughout the art of N_Grams, in technique, material, language, idea. There is a spectrum of subtleties in the physical dimensionality of each group— the later techniques are not possible to be executed on an urban wall and require a different space. However, the subversive motivations of the artist are present in every technique, demonstrating that the genre of street art is not exclusively bound to the 2-dimensional space of city walls.

PAINT/

The artist began by painting. Standard to the practice of graffiti, painting in this context is strictly two-dimensional. Here, they expectedly address ariousspheres of interest— specifically, the complex role of cosmic space and graphic design. The complex theme of the universe’s relationship to all matter isexplored through various abstract paintings. The images of cosmic scenes, addressing universality of matter, relate to the artist’s general position on art:it is all of the same phenomenon. Strangely contrary to the grand scale of outer space, with great respect to acute details. Seemingly straightforward, there are embedded messages in the simple practice of repeating and overlapping text. The canvases echo the characteristic street style of N_Grams that has graced city walls for years.

"Enormous Eruption"

/Aerosol Painting

x63mm/ y 1000mm/ z 1800mm
Spray painting on Canvas

"The Same Mistake"

/ Painting

x62mm/y1800mm/z480mm

Acrylic and Oil painting on Canvas

ENGRAVE/

A clever study on the interstitial technique between painting and sculpture, the artist engraves to synthesize the traditional schism between 2- and 3-dimensional art. A monochrome wooden block, when carved, reveals the natural condition of the wood beneath the surface. This technique is employed to produce images of the spray can, the most iconic tool in the creation of street art. The contrast of the two tones produces very simple images, revealing spray scenes frozen in time.

The in-between moment, where color travels between the can and the wall, is isolated and expressed by the in-between art of engraving.

"Cosmocreative"

/ Engraving

x7mm/ y900mm/ z1300mm

Wood, Spray Colours

"Content Under Pressure"/ Engraving
x7mm/ y900mm/ z1300mm
Wood, Spray Colour.

SCULPT/
A symbolic world that exists within the spray can is imagined and expressed with sculpture. Rather than the typical study of the aesthetic world beyond the can, the artist invites us within it. This series conceptually explores the pressures that motivate the can to explode and cover the world beyond its existence with the color it contains. Dissected, the spray can (a metaphor for the street artist archetype) is sculpturally represented in various mutilated forms. The deliberately undefined relationship between the can and the color—which is the tool and which is the subject—suggests an ultimate freedom of expression.

"Section 1 & 2"
/ sculpture
x 58mm/ y-z 195mm/ z-y 295mm

1/2 Spray Can 400ml & 1/2 Spray Can 500ml - Plaster, Steel, Oil Colour, Epoxy Resin

"Cracked Flask"

/sculpture

x246mm/ y230mm/ z350mm

SprayCan,Steel,Acrylic Clay, Paper,Epoxy Resin, Oil Colour, PVA Glue.

"Melted Fat Cap"

/sculpture

x280mm/ y270mm/ z450mm

Wood, Steel, Acrylic Clay, Paper, Epoxy Resin, Oil Colour, PVA Glue.

"Melted Spray Can"

/sculpture

x240mm/ y 320mm/ z 530mm

Wood, Steel, Acrylic Clay, Paper, Epoxy Resin, Oil Colour, PVA Glue.

"Melted Eclipse"

/ Sculpture

x180mm / y1060mm / z335mm

"Revolution"

/ Sculpture

x 370mm/ y 340mm/ z 980mm

Wood, Paper, Acrylic Clay, Oil Colour, PVC, Epoxy Resin, Acrylic Putty, PVA Glue, Steel

CURVE /

Curve, as a technique, is essentially the art of arrangement. The featured works seemingly have no relation to one another, although they all inherently carry the weight of the entire exhibition. Each work highlights a different way of arranging fragments, and each arrangement ultimately achieves a curved form.
The layered sheets, the sphered nails, the spiraled wood— all particles that relate to one another in the most natural of designs. Expressed by the curve of the Fibonacci spiral, the concept of φ as the golden ratio that relates all patterns in the physical universe is consistent with the artist’s observations on the relationship between universal and individual experiences.

"Convexity"
/ Mixed Media
x30mm/ y488mm/ z538mm

Wood, PVC Mirror, Epoxy Glue, Oil Colours, Epoxy Resin, PVA Glue, Clay.

"Antimatter Plume W"

/ Mixed Media

x17mm/ y1055mm/ z700mm/

Wood, Acrylic and Oil Colours, Epoxy Resin, PVA Glue.

"Mirroring Radius #02"

/ MixedMedia

Ø 380mm x 380mm y 380mm z380mm

2154 Tharros White Steel Nails, Mirror Pieces, PVC, Epoxy Glue.

"Angle of incidence"

/MixedMedia

Base x245mm/ y335mm/ z660mm
SprayCan x85mm/ y80mm/ z155mm

BUILD/

Common tools are represented in a playful series of papier-mâché sculptures.

The technique employed has the potential for the material to be built into any shape. And so the artist decided to build a collection that takes the form of tools— used to build. The act of building tools of usefulness in papier-mâche(rendering their formal duplicates as useless) is a witty reaction to the stigma against the uselessness of art.