MEDIA ARCHIVE


    ' '

Still Life with Lace, Chrysanthos Sotiropoulos


Chrysanthos Sotiropoulos has been painting consistently in the same rhythm from his student years at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1987-1992) until today. His work is known to a limited circle of friends and admirers. I will briefly mention three issues that are important for understanding the significance of his work.

The Drawing
Sotiropoulos draws as he feels. He navigates two dimensions with sharpness, intensity, imagination, and a multitude of small or even smaller hints. He defines spaces that encompass other spaces and knows when to be geometric and when to be abstract. He loves shape and form, but allows air to circulate. His drawings are sometimes blurry and sometimes clear, functioning simultaneously as both unfinished and complete. Textures, voids and filled spaces, outlines, and rich tones— a buzzing beehive of expressions from art history and the artist's rich personal vocabulary— make up his unprecedentedly dense and high-quality drawing.

The Technique
Sotiropoulos is a lover of two seemingly incompatible approaches to the problem of the painted surface. On one hand, he loves to dig into the surface to its limits, making him heretical and blasphemous, while on the other hand, he organizes the surface, leaving its bottom untouched, working like a classical Renaissance artist. He masters water, egg, oil, paper, wood, and fabric with equal skill. He constantly invents new ways and paths to transform each material into his own artistic event. Technically, his work is a reference point in contemporary Greek art.

The Myth
Sotiropoulos's work is dark and teleological. Existence is tormented, the fallen angel before his mirror and his god. Speech is fragmented. Time is always condensed, lasting a little and never returning. Space is usually stretched, just before shattering. Heavy atmosphere with intense iconographic characteristics, often on the verge of farce and comedy. In all his works, a condition of ritual is discernible, like a method of flaying the inner skin. A theatrical work seen in advance, with protagonists who are simultaneously the spectators and the ushers. His work is sharp and comes from the past.

Curated by: Themis Ragias, Sofia Iliana Georgiadi

The exhibition is presented as part of Back to Athens 11 International Art Meeting | 2024: Crossroads - knowledge and worldly pleasures – a review


Back to Athens 11 International Art Meeting | 2024
Curated by: Georg Georgakopoulos, Fotini Kapiris, Christian Rupp.
Organised by: APART Art Research and Applications. Under the Auspices of the City of Athens. With the financial support and under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture [Silence of the Sirenes], Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport, Austrian Embassy Athens, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna akbild, ZOIA, Czech Centre Athens in the frame of “Franz Kafka's memorial year 2024”. Participation, athensintersection, ARTmART. Coordinated by CHEAPART.

Back to Athens 11 International Art Meeting | 2024: Crossroads - knowledge and worldly pleasures
Isaiah Megaron
65 Patision, Athens

Opening date: Wednesday, June 26
Duration: 26 - 30.06.2024
Hours: Wed. – Fri. 16:00 - 22:00, Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 22:00