Pulp Paintings | Christodoulos Panayiotou

NiMAC [The Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Associated with the Pierides Foundation] presents the exhibition Pulp Paintings by Christodoulos Panayiotou, which is held with the collaboration of the Bank of Cyprus.

The exhibition presents a series of new pulp paintings by Christodoulos Panayiotou, in which the artist replaces common paper pulp with pulp made from discarded Euro banknotes, of all denominations (5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 Euros), acquired by the Bank of France. These were withdrawn and demonetised by the Central European Bank as new notes were issued.

As the curator of the exhibition says, this is not the first time that Panayiotou experiments, albeit in a quasi-technical and scientific way, with a specific technique (in this case pulp painting) to question contemporary social, political and financial structures and to critically contest the globalized cultural milieu that we operate in. For example, for his large-scale ceramic-floors, exhibited, among other places, at Documenta 13 in Kassel (2012) and at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2013-2014), he replaces the pumped water traditionally used in the manufacture of terracotta tiles with saltwater from the Mediterranean (the artist comes from the island of Cyprus in the Southeastern Mediterranean). Also, in The Price of Copper (2012), Panayiotou creates a fountain constructed of a single copper sheet in its raw material form, as sourced from the Skouriotissa copper mine in the Xeros area of Cyprus. In his choice of materials, Panayiotou emphasises the way in which national symbols serve as modern-day mythology engines, along with natural resources.

The exhibition will open its doors to the public on Tuesday, 12 December 2017 at 09:00 and will last until Saturday, 23 December 2017.

During the exhibition, curator Yiannis Toumazis and architect Phidias Pavlides will conduct two special tours in the premises, for which advanced booking is required (info@nimac.org.cy, 22797400).

Exhibition hours: 
Monday – Friday, 09:00 – 19:00

Special tour schedule:
Saturday, 16 December 2017 at 11:00
Saturday, 23 December 2017 at 11:00

Closing event:
Saturday, 23 December 2017 at 11:30