In new exhibition the day begins at night

In the context of the annual Project Room programme, NiMAC presents the exhibition The Day Begins at Night by artist Lefteris Tapas this month. Through Project Room, the Centre invites artists to use the premises of NiMAC as a three-dimensional field of expression.

Tapas chooses to focus on the union of opposites – light with darkness – and through a repetitive and reflective search process invites the viewer on a fascinating journey towards the light. As the artist says, the course in the exhibition space is: “a circular process, a Sisyphean labour that evolves in stages, starting from a space that alludes to the night, and as the viewer crosses it, the setting gradually changes into day. An endless cycle that once it ends starts again from the beginning. The order of the works is related to the hours, it is an ambiguous course through time, from dusk to dawn and from east to west.”

The viewer wanders through the setting of a landscape that suggests a magical world of natural phenomena or elements, such as twilight, sunrise and sunset, in which the unpredictability of the sea is connected with poetic correspondences, the horizon that separates the known from the unknown, or the memento mori of an eclipse.

The Day Begins at Night features pencil and ink drawings, paper and jesmonite sculpture installations, large cuttings, audio and video animation installations, thus composing an atmosphere or environment that studies time, space, hope and the need for an inner transformation-transfiguration.

“In these difficult but also threatening times for our planet,” says NiMAC, “Lefteris Tapas points out the need for man’s substantial return to his origins, to redefine his relationship with nature and with himself. A relationship that leads to the union of opposites, in which the ritual coexists with technology, and artificial intelligence is in constant dialogue with the intelligence of our ancestors.”

This is the sixth Project Room taking place. Each time a different space or even the whole of the premises of the Old Powerhouse is set apart and transformed into an incubator, an environment that promotes synergies, diversity and risk. An open and flexible space, within which emerging and established artists can interact, communicate and exchange ideas through existing works, or works specifically made for the space.

Through its alternative proposals (discussions, theoretical presentations, exhibitions, performances, etc.), Project Room essentially challenges the ways in which we perceive and understand art today. In addition, Project Room seeks to promote artistic research, experimental expression and investigation, thus contributing to the quest for new directions in contemporary art and to the substantial involvement and understanding of contemporary modes of thinking.

The very first Project Room invited artist Elina Ioannou, who presented the installation Caught in the Act. In the years that followed, the programme welcomed artists Antonis Antoniou and the Paravan Proactions team, Panayiotis Michael, photographer Ricarda Roggan in collaboration with Goethe-Insitut until the final Project Room which took place in 2014 with American artist Suzan Kleinberg presenting her new video installation entitled Kairos. Seven years later, the sixth edition of Project Room returns with The Day Begins at Night exhibition.

The Day Begins at Night

Exhibition by Lefteris Tapas, part of the Project Room annual programme.  May 22-July 24. NiMAC, Nicosia. Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 9pm. Tel: 22-797400