Assyrian-born Ninos Chammo calls his sculptures “an interactive message,” and if the dialogue is between the artist and the viewer, it is equally between artist and heritage. Chammo’s years of study in Florence, including the Academia Delle Belle Arti, have influenced his sculptural eye to a remarkable degree. Working in carmine and burgundy terra cotta and wood, Chammo reworks classical busts, and invests traditional forms with renewed power. His terra cotta Gilgamesh and Ankido reinterprets the ancient tale to produce a potent response to the myth of eternal life and eternal friendship. In Lost Memories, symbols are carved into the very muscles of the arms and chest of the subject. Memories are not lost at all, but preserved in the body, and, for Chammo, rediscovered in the sculpted medium. These figures are totems, or we have caught them in the moment of morphing between human and animal. Whatever the interpretation of these vibrant works, with his injection of a modern edge into classical forms, Chammo’s dialogue with ancient themes is exuberant. |
