Through this exhibition the gallery has tried to approach the ''New'' in art today. Basic axis for choosing the participating works were theories about neoterism, contemporary, of the modern and the demode at the same time; of an alternative view of the world and Art on the whole.
Artists by recording, criticizing, fantasizing and by their disposition, create works that reflect either upon the contemporary way of life or their detachment from it.
Furthermore, they approach art through a contemporary dialogue with movements of modernism, as redevelopment of Pop-Art, Expressionistic Symbolism, Surrealism and Abstraction.
Evridiki Kallimachou, presents abstract works giving emphasis to counter-diffusion and inrush of one color to another, at times with monotints or striking color variations.
Thin color alterations and variations and an expansion of the dripping technique, radiate tenderness and internal tension antagonizing the somewhat austere synthesis.
The tenderness of the colors, the antithetic presence of few spots of harsh black color, an austere structure of soft changes and variations are characteristics of Kallimachous' surrealistic style. Her works spring from personal experiences, their subjects are in such a way altered, so that the viewer does not recognize a reconstruction but the quality.
The artist claims for her work ''..painting is an act of commitment but also of redemption, for it constitutes a free meaningful relationship in my life. Being more specific. with the help of surrealism I have tried to express myself with images which have not yet been determined inside my mind maybe because their creation is detected by an undisputed necessity..With abstraction I have tried to dismiss any unnecessary elements and get involved with the essence of the problem, which I could characterize it us the limit between two different places and my desire to freely ''roam'' between them.
This accessibility became the ''breaking'' of boundaries, the spreading, and the open horizon. To this openness, I scout and mould oneiric images, through which things emerge in calmness upon the canvass. The importance of procedure is as important as the final result itself. My painting action is a way of imposing myself into the void creating a ''place-self''.
In this new work, the artist experiments with the very texture of the work, aiming at freedom of though. In reality it is like repeating almost the same work, in an effort to have a look behind the mirror.
Katerina Konstantinidi, presents large works on paper strongly reminding us murals or contemporary dark comics. The black color is almost evident in most of her works, these images have an atmospheric sense, a feeling of dream-space, conscious or unconscious. The essence of myth in these works, lies within a total holistic approach of ''being'', through Eastern bio theories and theories about the universe, meditation and symbolism are topics that the artist uses to approach psychologically and ontologically human relations and attitudes. The figures, men and women, are mainly symbols/personifications of the male and female archetype, of Anima and Animus of the dual world in the Indus tradition. Modern man and woman can be seen as the artistic reincarnations of Shiva and Sahkti- of consciousness and materiality. The dance of male-female, the vitiation of duplicity and the union of the two, social structures, the sense of time and of fertility, the mad mans' archetype, different practices, fear or control are some of the situations with which the artist gets involved with. Evident is the interference of symbols and eastern theories and elements of the modern western world and civilization.
Fotis Pechlivanidis, works are in close reference to comics pop culture, but approached by western contemporary man; who is being victim and immolator in a totally consumers society and carrier of all the concomitant values emanating from this. The basic axis of his works is the relationship between the two sexes. The artist describes situations of temptation, desire, Eros, challenge, the game of two, the flirting game in rotation with the raw recording of what is happening in the contemporary western world. Emphasized cinematic close-ups, vivid-clear colors, the perfect, no variations in tone surfaces and the classic colors used by pop artists, like blue, red, yellow, white and black, at their most bright variations similar to the glamorous world he depicts, creates but also gibes the idols of our every day life.
Main role in his pictures has the modern woman, as a personification or like a fresh pictorial motif, taking the place of a preterit prototype of female beauty that of goddess Aphrodite. Weither she rises from the sea or gets out of bed, named Aphrodite or Luna or anything else the result remains the same.
The artist stays dedicated in beauty, the absolute beauty found on the female form. He creates direct and simple images reminding us the necessity of love in our lives. Furthermore, he enjoys the opposing game of high culture and street culture; he feels that he belongs somewhere in between.
Concluding, Nektaria Roumelioti, in a neo-surrealistic style attributes internal spaces. The young artist with an evident obsession to detail and motives, places inside these spaces children's images with grown-up expressions.
The depiction of a child instead of an adult is to symbolically state the beginning of oppression of the most immediate human instincts, which during childhood are expressed spontaneously and ''untouched'' by society's' ''musts''. The surrealistic element is evident not only in the expressions but also in the smouldering senses that at times emit irony or sensuality, austerity or anger and other times boredom or melancholy.
Most certainly the above are not expressions that state happiness and childishness but would be more suited to adults.
Therefore, the Environment, the ''musts'' of an Ethical Society can act as opponents to Spontaneity, Instinct and Innocence. The internal spaces in which the artist places her figures are also surrealistic. Sterilized white dominates and rotates pale tones and detailed - almost tenaciously attributed wall-mounted upholstery motives, referring to the inside of urban houses of the 40's or earlier, when firm ethics and musts encaged, suppressed, incriminated and in a way castrated human natural tendencies. Painting perception adapts to meaning and content.
Figures seem like they are hovering above the ground; surrealistic, cut and paste figures of another more child-like world, to a grown-ups world. One can distinguish transmuted references to the Classics after the Renaissance and the Surrealists under the influence of contemporary surrealistic aesthetics of photography and photomontage. |
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