Translator: Panagiota Prokopi Reviewer: Ioannis Papacheimonas
Hello!
This is the first time a painter is asked to come to the stage of this event.
I am honored to be invited and to be right here talking to you,
mostly as an echo of my last exhibition by the title: "The essentials".
In this unit of art I had aspired
to attribute a sentiment of spirituality,
representing the plain matter of the tangible world around us.
Thus, many values of our life will be demonstrated.
You see on screen, pictures of this exhibition's work pieces.
As far as a fleeting digital image can demonstrate us
the materiality I wanted to show.
Because all of this work pieces were drawn
on used long and narrow pieces of wood, taken from mountain bridges.
Difficult crossings.
Every single wood, every single art piece, a bridge.
Man's achievement to overcome an obstacle.
The length and the narrow size of the pieces were chosen to point out
the length and the narrow size of the road we travel
until we reach the other side.
People like us are drawn, as exhausted and charged,
in the middle of the road.
In the background, a door halfway open in the light.
A crack of light, which invites us to move forward.
Behind, a simple meal serves as companion, a made bed,
water for us to be elegant, a towel, a soap,
a mirror for us to see our face clean
and the door half way open.
Introducing the audience in the dark corridor,
I said back then that I was challenging myself to seek man's quest.
I had a vision.
I was dreaming of prosperity.
Enjoying the essentials things in our life.
Like when we are tired and starving,
we sit and put in our mouth a mouthful of bread, a grape
and we sense the taste of it, the bliss?
I had in mind something like that.
Standing up relieved of all the unnecessary things.
Overthrow the crisis, while being criticized.
And criticized, to evaluate the essential, to substance.
My desire was this display to not just be
an aesthetic exhibition,
but to aim directly to the participants' heart.
Relieve the stare on the matter of the pieces
and on the painting's convincement
and irritate our tendency towards the high and the principle,
because deep inside us, we have the tendency of the high, the exaltation.
Climb higher.
Comprehend a higher sense of being.
It's our innermost desire,
to defeat death before he defeats us.
Overtake him and come back to life.
Not to crawl.
I felt the need for us to be free,
to get rid of this ephemeral tyranny.
From the tyranny of the ephemeral which preserves the mediocrity
and the frills' bountifulness.
But our quality is not ephemeral.
We can't be returned exactly.
While we live, everything is immortal, everything that's alive and dead.
Our soul lives in a broaden place and in a dilated time.
Each moment is filled with the world's infinite eternity.
This infinity is not a measure, it's not a variety of numbers.
It is the conscience of the one of no use.
The world's universal unity conscience.
Each of you, an entire world.
A vase full of mysteries.
With unexpected and destructive potential but also with an endless power of love.
Hovering, we fare, stepping here and there.
We fare both in good and evil.
Searching for the thread, to find next step,
to shape our own path.
I was born and raised in the country.
Among people who were refuges coming from Asia Minor in 1922,
people who lived through the war, the resistance,
the occupation, the Civil War, their consequences,
and I feel that if they were listening to us today
complaining about life today,
what we have named crisis, they'd probably laugh.
They lived in far worse conditions than us
and they managed not only to stand on their feet
but to build a future.
Me studying by their side was a study on fixing and lifting.
Back then nothing was seen as garbage.
They fixed and their life, made it better.
Whether it was a cloth they had to repair,
or a tool, a machine, a furniture, a kitchen item
a relationship.
Even still, you stumble on difficulties.
Sometimes I look back to encourage myself
and acknowledge the pride of their few possessions.
I see a smile, a wink,
a nod: "Go ahead kid, move ahead".
I paint since I was a kid, before I started going to school.
But as a teenager, I turned away from my gift, I took it for granted
and I believed my duty was to fight and change the world.
So I left, my hometown, a rebel,
I studied in law school, came up on dead ends, I was indecisive,
and at last I ended up in the School of Fine Arts,
but feeling like a castaway there as well.
I couldn’t find a a purpose, a contact.
I was gifted, but I couldn't feel
the certainties of a stable artistic education giving me answers.
I was struggling to comprehend the whats and the whys of art.
Thank God, that's what I'm saying now.
So I felt that painting, by nature and need,
belongs with truth and eternity.
It turns to these two.
What's the point though in a social convention like our own,
which is constantly making us replace new with newest
and looking forward to the even more new?
When does new get old?
And what is the meaning of painting
to an audience which states awkwardly that it knows nothing of art?
To whom, then, is it meant for and what does it tells them?
What is it about all this universal, worldwide respect and admiration
in the high credibility of art?
With such thoughts in my head I tangled art and life
in old paths and questions.
My painting became a place of self awareness.
A bright curtain in the chaos, a road which brought me up till here.
Is the darkness empty? I was wondering while I looked upon the chaos.
What do we see in the light?
Is it the representation, the show of a tendency of an exhibition?
Is it the surface, the distinction of the invisible?
What is obvious and how does it represent itself?
Is this being a signal or is it corporeal?
Is it possible for human beings to mean something beyond the obvious?
Depict the absolute?
Does virtue has a face, or just sense?
What's the point of the self-expression of an artist, a creator
if it's not reflected in his work
and the community’s perception for the high and prime?
The art has spirit or is it only meant for decoration?
Is it an aesthetic or a moral category the great beauty,
the beauty that will save the world?
Or is it just the world which saves beauty?
But then why does the paint exists? Why nothing in its place?
To raise consciences?
Or to make us feel more at ease?
Maintain the establishment or countermand the world's perception?
To be an agent of civilizing?
Or is it a tool of manipulation?
Is it an escape raft?
But is it possible for anyone to save himself?
Or does the ark belong to the community?
Which art pertains to one, and which to the other?
Which serves which purpose? Whose?
But people don't stand before us to give answers.
It echoes only our questions and reflects our scars.
But still those questions are precious to us.
Through these questions we shape our substance.
These questions illuminate our faces, make it sparkle.
These questions are also give birth to our work.
They are built over them.
They lead us.
They are redacting us where we wish to be redacted.
We are the answer to our questions.
Through our work, our actions, our life.
We make our life.
We set the example.
What is our life? A poem is what it is.
A lesson. Good or bad, we make the call.
If darkness is around us or inside us,
what we really want is freedom in the light.
Of course, freedom needs virtue and boldness.
Patience is also required.
To wait until the right time has come, until it's ripe.
But it's in our hands.
It's in our hands not to lose the light.
Because we have something to hold on,
to stand on.
Till we manage to build a bridge above the difficulties
and move forward.
I left on purpose this image for last,
as a summary of all things I said, a persistent scratch in the darkness.
Until it is scratched, until we see the light.
Because it's in our hands, the future we will share.
Thanks for listening.
(Applause)