Nikos Tranos

A major figure in contemporary Greek art, he has studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1983-1988) and the Εcole des Beaux Arts (1990-1991) in Paris. He has been teaching sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts since 1995. He creates spatial works. He is interested in the concept of time and its endless flow, as well as in the existence and function of the human memory. He employs many different materials, going from paper and clay to pencil and wax, or to building materials. The discreet white candy-house with the musical mechanism was presented in 1997 in the Kelyfos group show, as the first of a series of works which addressed the viewer’s hearing. The idea evolved into an environment of several musical candy-houses suspended in the air, inviting visitors to pull their strings and activate their mechanisms to fill the space with melodies (Inside; Kassel, 1997). His next solo exhibition was a tapestry of some 1,500 identical white mechanisms which played over one hundred different melodies. Alongside these work,s he also photographs compositions “staged” by himself. This led to his more recent projects, in which he takes pictures of microcosms. He also uses photography in his visual work for bus-stop shelters. His works are predominantly comments on the multiplicity of the artwork and the visual artist’s need to communicate with a broader public. He has presented his work in many individual and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad.