The never ending praise of shapes and colorTakis Mavrotas, Head of Pierides Gallery

Painting is mainly a pleasure of the sight. Modern artists, especially those who continue to pursue the picture with great passion, all and each one of them driven by their own plastic power, seek to create a form of plastic expression. Art sometimes leads them to a path towards what may exceed them. Costis Georgiou belongs to the category of artists who seek intensely a different aspect of reality and to those who persist in the pursue of what may be permanent and imperishable, as opposed to the perishable and the temporary.

The adventure of painting is enormous and Georgiou, starting from the beginning of his evolutionary course, has focused on the approach of the human figure. Visual reality provides him with the necessary stimulants for his creative work in order to discover its unknown or mysterious aspects. His instinctive motions determine his own pace of work and express for him both shape and content. This way bright green, deep red, intense blue or brilliant yellow with their almost abrupt depiction on the painting canvas become secret references of a personal confession.

The gesticulation of his art is direct when he tries to compress thousand of experiences into a vision of the moment. Forms and shapes do not take up a random place on the canvas. Their place is determined in relation with the emotion they are called upon to bring about. Georgiou is an artist who in his hands holds the most admirable distorting mirror of the world, in order to pose the unanswered questions which preoccupy him. His agony is revealed through his own works, since each one of them conveys several different emotions.

These idiosyncratic expressionistic figures of Georgiou seem to be charged with a sense of responsibility, as if they were wondering about what is fair and what is unfair, what is a moral protest and what is God?s wrath. They are haunted pictures hidden in the back of the memory, something like an extract of the substance of life, based on the game of their transformation. What part does affliction play in his work? Georgiou himself is well aware that goodness in our days is rare to find, almost impossible. His vision of the world is defined by dreamlike co-notations, poetic transcendences and psychic conditions. Georgiou refuses to use his inventiveness as a tool in his hands to transform reality into a lyric narration and his figures are not gifted with euphoria nor grace; furthermore they are definitely not idealized to the point of a natural grandeur. Instead in their own way they commune with fear, hope, death and life. Even in his enormous paintings one is given the impression that the artist tries to incorporate the unknown into the known. In several cases his figures seem to have realized their mortal nature or have denied the anticipation of a spiritual immortality. Light is diffused through the threatening darkness, pure and clear, aiming at the known-unknown paths of the soul. This is of course not a naturalistic light but an unexpected contradiction of colors which strengthen the sense of awe or mystery.

Based on his cultural inheritance Georgiou creates modern art. His obvious respect for Bacon, Picasso, Moore and Spyropoulos has defined his views over creating his own plastic style. Since 1986 he focused passionately and indefatigable both in painting and sculpture. However reality once more determines his actions and calls him to exceed it with his art. The on-going process of life, the pace of being, the rhythm of a straight line and a of curve play the most important role when he forms his unexpected figures. Gigantic figures with a surrealistic attitude commune with smaller sculptured forms. Sarcasm and irony reveal his critical views, while at the same time disclose his deeper intention which unites his painting with his sculpture world, his wish to approach the substance of the human soul in its mystery world.

Goethe used the utterance ?et in Arcadia ego?. The latest work of Georgiou, during the period 1997-2001, called EX PATRIA, may carry away our spirit to the legendary world of thought, in a journey with no ending.

TAKIS MAVROTAS

HEAD OF PIERIDES GALLERY