Niko Abramidis &NE, Development Friend BSLK, 2020

2020

Medium

Canvas, spraypaint and embroidery

Dimensions

25 × 21 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-156102

Development Friends is a series of small canvases covered in a spray paint base, on which cartoonish creatures from Niko Abramidis &NE's symbolic world are portrayed. Mythical creatures like Basilisks or Hydras are arranged in profile, almost like employee portraits lined up along office corridors, representing their position and ties to the company. Utilizing a machinal embroidery technique, the artist embroiders various characters directly onto the canvas, along with one personalized runic symbol. These motifs are reminiscent of high-quality fabric emblems which, on the one hand, function as cryptographic attributes describing the qualities of the portrayed, on the other hand which can be interpreted as shorthand initials. The portrait series depicts an internal and homogeneous corporate language, which remains illegible to the outside world. Similar to the embroidered emblems, the titles of the individual Development Friends – such as CNTR, HRPY, RHN, BSLKS, etc. – cannot be interpreted at first glance and must be deciphered. The titles give the individual characters a name, at the same time uniting all under one sterile corporate identity. In this work, the artist derisively refers to asset management companies, who utilize this easily decipherable naming system for their products and services, created from the simple removal of vowels within a word. With Development Friends, Abramidis &NE draws a humorous picture of a fictional corporate culture, coded through modes of representation, symbols and material aesthetics.