Signs | Dimitris Ntokos

Jan 15

Written By Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art

Dimitris Ntokos was originally introduced to the Greek art scene as a street artist. Deeply influenced by the symbols of ancient Egypt, he worked at first with the motif of the scarab and then, at a later stage, with the hieroglyphs that took over his compositions.

EXHIBITION | 25.01.2023 - 02.03.2023

CURATOR | Mohamed Benhadj

ADDRESS | Calle Comerç 11, 08003 Barcelona.

First solo show at the gallery of the Greek artist Dimitris Ntokos.

SIGNS - Solo Show

Dimitris Ntokos works mainly with acrylics and oils in bright colors. It is striking that most symbols are not repeated on the surface he has chosen to work on, be it a canvas, a car, a wall, or a mirror. One symbol follows the other, therefore unfolding a mysterious papyrus, a cryptic letter, and a coded diary, the symbols of which are interpreted through the eyes of each viewer. The peculiarity of Ntoko's new series is that each ideogram is isolated in the square composition of the canvas, in contrast to the previous series, where the ideograms flood the surface, one after the other. Dimitris Ntokos offered, throughout his career, a shift from the story to the letter. As if looking through the magnifying glass at his older works, the viewers are invited to look thoroughly at the form of each letter, at the details of the original "texts." They find themselves observing the very beginning of Dimitris Ntokos' linguistic labyrinth. With the works placed next to each other, in horizontal but also vertical arrangements, the gallery space functions as a "Tabula Rasa," where the artist's new collection unfolds on the walls, mapping a new viewing path/text line for the "reader" of his works.

Through this solo exhibition, the artist turns our gaze to the "beginning" of his characteristic artistic identity and reveals that each of the symbols is a letter and that its alphabet consists of 26 letters. There are alphabets with more letters, different characters, a strange writing direction, specific ways of imprinting, and even particular writing tools. But there are also alphabets like Ntokos' hieroglyphs that are not decoded. Each representation hides a letter from the Latin alphabet without expressing a note or a syllable. Whether each represents a whole concept, retelling a story, remains an open question.