Nicolas Kozakis
SMARTPHONES !! please click on the pictures to REDUCE the SIZE of the pictures
Born 1967, Liège, works and lives in Brussels
Nicolas Kozakis est peintre et sculpteur, pratique aussi bien l’installation, la vidéo ou la photographie et porte un intérêt particulier à l’architecture et à l’espace public.
The multilayered oeuvre of Nicolas Kozakis (1967, Liège) is filled with a deep-rooted poetry: with his sensitive soul, he captures the simple, ‘beautiful’ things that he encounters in his immediate surroundings. Using a broad spectrum of artistic means, the artist seeks to capture or compose images or create them himself. For this, he likes to harness the potential of media such as photography and video, which reveal a more documentary side to his work. He makes a giant leap from this ‘in situ’ quest amidst the natural and urban landscape to the white box of the gallery. Here, he exhibits sanitised artworks that contain elements of both painting and sculpture: the wall-mounted objects are somewhere between a ‘flat’, two-dimensional painting on the one hand, and a sculpture that is becoming detached from the wall on the other.
In one of his latest series, Kozakis explores the boundaries between the two art forms, defined by art history as opposites and competitors. Within this context, he draws his inspiration for both form and content from the tradition of icons. For many centuries, holy figures were depicted in Eastern Orthodox Catholic cultures in this singular form: pure and uniform, with their familiar gold-brown, red and blue hues and gold leaf. In this context, the icon is a representation of the deity, not a literal effigy, and acts as a medium for contemplation. Kozakis abstracts these vital details in a contemporary way by resolutely opting for one specific colour: a monochrome.
The works have titles like Rolls Royce Infinity Black Met W41 and Porsche Kristallgrün Met A6W 3P – technical descriptions that directly allude to colour codes that he borrows from luxury cars. Kozakis employs a bodywork specialist to apply these colour shades to the supports in UV-resistant enamel paint, and then finish them with a perfect looking, glossy layer of varnish. The painted medium is usually wood, but is sometimes marble, which he orders from a manufacturer of authentic icons.
The radical absence of figurative elements encourages reflection on the meaning and role of the image. The Western viewer – hardened and oversaturated with mass media on a daily basis – is looking for something to hold on to, some kind of recognition, but fails to find it. In literary sources, icons are frequently described as “windows on eternity”, and Kozakis’ monochromes also function as a kind of two-way mirror. The works lie somewhere in between the artist and the viewer, and bring about a reciprocal projection: what lies behind the artist’s gaze, and what drives us to look in this way? The monochrome surface does not furnish us with an answer, but merely reflects the echoes of these musings.
The artist attempts to shake his viewers out of their lethargy by paradoxically juxtaposing the decadence of luxury cars with the purity of the icon tradition. Contemporary society appears only to function on the basis of the constant, insatiable consumption of useless goods. In this series of monochromes, and indeed in his entire oeuvre, Kozakis’ goal is to offer an antidote: a contemporary view of our centuries-old history that is bursting with extraordinary stories, noble values and pure beauty.
Melanie Deboutte
Rolls Royce Infinity Black Met
(…) Nicolas Kozakis reconnaît poser, par le biais du monochrome, une résistance à l’inflation et à la saturation de l’image, (…). A la nature sacrée et contemplative qui se voit volontiers accolée au monochrome, le peintre insuffle de manière subversive et paradoxale un glissement sémantique.
La radicalité du monochrome ainsi pris au pied de la lettre bascule, le formalisme et le spiritualisme, avers et revers d’une même tentation, sont ici parodiés. Le geste de Kozakis n’est pas sans relever d’une attitude post-moderne en ce qu’il utilise le monochrome tel un produit fini hautement connoté, sorte de ready-made conceptuel, pour le déplacer sur un tout autre terrain que le sien. De fait, laques de carrosserie sur panneaux de bois assemblés selon la méthode traditionnelle des supports d’icônes auxquelles ils empruntent également leur format, ses tableaux monochromes au surfacement miroir d’une perfection quasi immatérielle, délèguent aux firmes spécialisées le soin de leur mise en couleur, en un rappel amusé de la nature divine de l’icône « qui n’est pas de la main de l’homme ». Clin d’oeil aussi aux symboles de réussite de ce monde consumériste que sont les luxueuses Porsche, Rolls Royce, Ferrari et autres Lamborghini à la subtile et exponentielle gamme chromatique dont s’inspire le peintre pour formuler autant d’échos contemporains aux tonalités du répertoire iconographique byzantin qui titreront, sans détour mais avec une certaine poésie décalée, ses oeuvres. (…) Résistance silencieuse de ces surfaces aveuglantes (…) réfléchissantes chez Kozakis, défont le regard et déjouent la vision.
Christine Jamart, extraît du texte ‘Par-delà le silence’
‘Lamborghini LS9R Bianco Icarus Pearl Mat #1′, 2016, 43 x 30 cm
‘Lamborghini LS9R Bianco Icarus Pearl Mat #3′, 2016, car paint on wood, 38 x 42 cm
‘Porsche_LY9B_MattEdition’, 2016, car paint on wood, 47 x 29 cm
‘Corvette GM Atomic Orange – Met’, 2007, 39,5 x 28,5 cm
‘Rolls Royce Infinity Black Met W41′, 2012, car paint on marble, 34 x 27,5 cm
‘Porsche Amethyst Pearl Effect’, 2015, car paint on wood, 43,5 x 30 cm
‘Rolls Royce Dark Olive FV 47 – G602′, 2011-2016, car paint and copper on wood, 63 x 52 cm
‘Gold’, 2016, ducate double polish gold 23,5 carat on wood , 44 x 33,8 cm
‘Porsche Kristallgrün Met A6W 3P’, 2011, car paint on wood, 91 x 68,5 cm
‘Audi Blau Q1. LY5J’, 2007, car paint on wood , 36,7 x 27 cm
‘Porsche Platinsilber Met M7T’, car paint on marble from Thassos & ‘Royce Cassiopeia Silver Met W85′, car paint on marble from Naxos, 2012, both, 44 x 34 cm
Klash 6, 2008, oil and acrylic paint on canvas, 150 x 237 cm
Klash Chevrolet 16U/Electric Yellow Effect X2129, 2009, car paint on aluminum, 110 x 55 cm
L’envers du décor – Installation CACLB (Galerie Les Drapiers) – Centre d’Art Contemporain du Luxembourg belge (B) – 2015
L’envers du décor – Installation CACLB (Galerie Les Drapiers) – Centre d’Art Contemporain du Luxembourg belge (B) – 2015
L’envers du décor – Installation CACLB (Galerie Les Drapiers) – Centre d’Art Contemporain du Luxembourg belge (B) – 2015
L’envers du décor – Installation CACLB (Galerie Les Drapiers) – Centre d’Art Contemporain du Luxembourg belge (B) – 2015
Fiat 500 in aluminum foil – Rialto-Sant’Ambroogio – Roma (I) -2000
shovel, aluminum foil
Athos, 2002, bed, aluminum foil
Installation at Espace 251 NORD – Liège (B) – 1991, ‘Chapelle votive’, 1991, steel, asphalt, 140 x 50 x 50 cm – sculpture in the corner: wood, acrylic on cotton
‘Un grain de poésie dans un désert de sable’ – 2015 digital video – 9,54’ – ©images: Nicolas Kozakis – ©text: Raoul Vaneigem
‘Qu’en est-il de notre vie?/What of our life?’, 2014 – digital video, 5,12’ ©images: Nicolas Kozakis – ©text: Raoul Vaneigem
‘Our existence is a maze 2013, ©Nicolas Kozakis, Eugène Savitzkaya, Raoul Vaneigem, digital video, 5’47