POWERFUL REALISM – FRAGILE REALITY | Dr Lina Tsikouta – Deimezi

Three proposals by three Greek artists form one distinguishable and exciting encounter converging in a shared art exhibition inspired from relations, uniqueness, similarities, but also with fundamental contradictions, distinctiveness and the personal visual style of each of the artists.

The dominant and common theme is the persistence in executing a particular Realism that emphasizes drawing and painting fluency in rendering reality with a persistence on detail that surprises and reveals a mystical and uninterpreted inner reality.

Leonidas Giannakopoulos, Andreas Zymvragos and Lamprini Boviatsou present through their recent works of art, other similarities such as their technique. The first one presents art with ink on paper, the second, pencil on rice paper and the last artist, coloured pencils on paper. Another common characteristic is the small size of the artists works. Also, the three artists share common themes based on prevailing contradictions.

Leonidas draws bizarre insects in desert landscapes with unanticipated buildings, perfectly rendered flowers habited by horrific insects. The buildings are inspired by old paintingsor by  fantastical combinations. The beings of plant and animal life originate from the study of naturalist drawings of the 16th century. The compositions touch the utopian, the fantastic, where hybrid insects, cocoons, worms, beetles and butterflies appear with unexpected heads, skeletons, old kings, dragons, fictitious animals, creating an intense outlandish atmosphere. In complete contradiction are the even fine renderings with grotesque elements (influenced by the fantastic works of Ernst) and the intense dramatist.

Andreas, with his enigmatic compositions, presents forms with indecipherable esoteric realities; with the indefinable tumultuous psychic of these figures in special moments, filled with mystery. Outdoor landscapes, desolate worlds, fog, solitude, sorrow, frozen in time, silent houses under cloud-filled skies. Men and women tightly-sealed in their inner dramatic reality. Male naked legs in the foreground, suspended in the void with birds in flight in the background. Enigmatic, stark-is it reference to one before the fall? The impeccable execution of technique seems to be undermined by the overlapping of foggy, soft-toned veils; like Rembrandt who covered the objects that lived in the interiors of his paintings with a velvet darkness. Andreas chooses to portray a particularly charming, disguised, hazy reality.

Lambrini continues to insist the meticulous perfectly rendered portrayal of her reality. Her self-portraits and portraits of beloved persons such as her baby, always with the dominant element of distortion, reflection, transparency, focus on the selective enlargement of detail. Her self-portraits and objects of everyday life are portrayed enlarged due to the reflection in a car windshield, in computer monitors, in glasses or in a transparent utensil. The simultaneous dual depiction of her face and its idol, consists of the theme and also of the complex conceptual context of her image.

These three artists use as a starting point, the systematic observation of phenomenon of external reality to insinuate their own inner personal reality, using the power of their morphological creative imagination. Versions of neorealism joined with the reality of an instant photographic depiction. Proposals that emphasize a supernatural “hyperrealism”, where a photograph is used as an underlying preparation; as a carnet d ‘esquisses. Focusing on detailed reality through the intense enlargement of the photographic view, these artists proceed with an illusionary truth, with an existential dimension, attributing allusion, – the fragments of a multi-faceted existentialism of contemporary society.

Their artwork is based on contradictions, where the perfection of a portrayal is in combination with the unexpected, with distortion, reflection, calmness, turmoil. In their compositions a relationship between reality and illusion, an optical illusion, camouflage, and transformation is developed. Their works of art emanate a mystery about the truth that is hidden beneath their images as well as creating an unrestrained desire in the spectator to decode them. Regarding the convergence of their art, it can be noted that the three artists with an arduous, time consuming and systematic manner along with traditional and sparse means as far as technique is concerned, surprise us with their faithfulness and perfection of their depictions, offering something new beyond the old. These artworks with common elements but also with notable differences, compose restrained samples of a personal contemporary aesthetic style that offers us a thematic stimulation to the eye, mind, and soul; with a visual encounter that highlights a pact of differentiation.

Dr. Lina Tsikouta – Deimezi
Art Historian