OLAF NICOLAI: Installation in front of the Olympic Stadium in Athens

Olaf Nicolai presents his installation “I never look at you from the place from which you see me” opposite the Panathenaic Stadium (Kallimarmaro) in the center of Athens.

The two photographs displayed on billboards were taken in June 2022 in ancient Olympia, Greece, using a parabolic mirror – the mirror used every two years to light the Olympic torch with the sun's rays.

The photographs by artist Olaf Nicolai show the landscape and the historical site of ancient Olympia as anamorphic, floating distortions. Anamorphic images break the classical notions of perspective and create visual disturbances that destabilize the concept of stable subjectivity and suggest a rather awkward process of seeing. The distortion and confusion of perspective begs the question: Who exactly is looking at what? Or to put it in the words of the French poet Valery: “I see myself as I see myself”.

I never look at you from the place from which you see me, 2023. Courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin

The exhibited works show images that are created when a parabolic mirror is confronted with another type of mirror – a camera – instead of a flashlight. As Nicolai says: “My photos make a paradox visible”. In the run-up to the 33rd Olympic Games in Paris, these works on site, in front of the stadium, examine the complex history of the contemporary games in relation to their ancient origins.

THE INSTALLATION CAN BE SEEN FROM JUNE 5 TO JULY 7, 2024.

Panathenaic Stadium (Kallimarmaro), Athens
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