Limassol, Cyprus-born Kallinikou defies expectations of photography, disregarding the usual standards for composition, sharpness and exposure to create abstract images that visualise “nebokeru” – through isolated patches of sky, a glint on water, falling raindrops.
In Japanese, there is a word for the state of being half-asleep: “nebokeru”. It is derived from “boke” or blur, which carries nuances in meaning, from out of focus to confused. Artist Stelios Kallinikou new photographic series is inspired by “nebokeru”. The exhibition will be showcased at Dubai’s Grey Noise gallery. Nebokeru, as the title of the exhibition goes, is on view at Grey Noise, Dubai, until Saturday, March 6.
Kallinikou adds up the concepts of nebokeru with the photography term “Bokeh” with both meaning an intentional out of focus quality in the pictures.
He came up with the idea during a walk by a lake in Cyprus, after a butterfly caught his eye. As the movement of butterfly is very difficult to capture he used bokeh and began capturing the reflections on the lake’s surface, resulting in spheres of light typical to this technique.
In the pictures , he focused on this phenomenon and put the light totally out of focus to create abstract picture. His works call for closer inspection, quietly and slowly. There is a softness to them, as though still trying to take shape. One can only be clearer about the pictures once they are nearer to it. In one part of the exhibition, a group of images features raindrops falling outside the artist’s apartment window, all taken from the same location during the Covid-19 lockdown. They don’t always appear as rain, but more as silvery streaks against a mottled background.
He explores this further in his photographs of the sky, which appear more as block paintings. Here, he claims to challenge the technical term of “clarity” in photography. “It refers to the sharpness of an image, but for me, the clarity of the sky represents a clearness in vision.” Kallinikou also pays diligent consideration to which of his photographs are shown to the public, often reviewing them over the course of a year before deciding to let them be seen.
Not all his works have done away with representation altogether. In a photograph titled Leaf, Kallinikou captures what appears to be levitating leaf, though in reality it is caught in a spider web. Still, it achieves what the artist sets out to do, which is to compel us to look and question what we are seeing.