Nikos Navridis

Nikos Navridis practice has involved many works using balloons and breath, the two videos  below are documentations of pieces including both. I found his work in a website/blog containing large amount of works related to breathing, it was a very happy day for me since I was having a hard time finding artists that were interested in breath or balloons - what I was interested in at the time. Check the website out here 
www.artbreath.wordpress.com 

Nikos Navridis - Snow Balloons video

I found Snow Balloons interesting because the work was depending on the audience's breath to become. Although this is important in most art practices today, it is especially evident in Snow Balloons since if the audience did not blow up the balloons, no one would. The audience literally leaves a part of themselves inside the work, and subsequently they are united with everyone else's. I see it as a sort of re-encarnation, each balloon a metaphor for each person. Each person, blowing life into the balloon. The only thing I found distracting was that when each balloon was blown up it looked like a breast, a population of breasts. I wonder if it was intentional or not... probably not. 


Nikos Navridis - Looking for a place video

It can be said that in Looking for a place Navridis moves up a step, and 'pushes' the person blowing the balloon, into it. Resulting in a group of people (not the audience) wondering around the room aimlessly as their senses become muted. With their heads inside the balloon, every sense becomes a blur, except for their own breathing and breath surrounding their heads. I was attracted by this work because of that deprivation of senses, cutting everything out except for the air around and inside the person. Nothing else to focus on but it.