“MYTHOLOGY II: A PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY”- DREAMS, WHISPERS ON PAPER
What is it that takes us to art galleries? The pictures, placed side by side, confronting each other in the hall, back rooms of the gallery, being influenced by each other’s colours, odours, secret and obvious stories inside them, different but breathing the same atmosphere. The works of art having their existence in the artist’s working place, with the material he/she chooses on the canvas, paper. The pieces of works make their way from our lenses to the deep corners of our souls, stretching out their hands in their light and darkness, telling us stories without words in our roots that we think we do not know but actually we have the knowledge of by instinct with the heart language.
“Mythology II: A Personal Mythology” is dear Andreas Georgiadis’ last personal exhibition that took place at İstanbul Concept Gallery in Beyoğlu, İstanbul. He is one of the most distinguished artists of the gallery. As the influence of his previous exhibition of 2023 “Come Back”, which he dedicated to the great Greek poet Constantine Cavafy and I visited a lot of times is with me, I met the exhibition a short time after the opening. We had the privilege of meeting the artist personally and having a tour of the exhibition with him on the last day of the event. One of the pictures took place at İstanbul Concept’s International 360 Degrees Love Festival, “Spring Triology, Green”. It was one of the most glamorous pieces of the festival, with the motto ”Do Not Look Back”. The festival takes place every year in February.
Georgiadis, who is called “Master of light”, was born in Thessaloniki, in 1972. He took art lessons from George Rorris. He added illustration studies in Orleans, France to his education of Graphic Design at the School of Graphic Arts. The artist has international solo exhibitions all over the world, his works are bought by international collectors, state and private museums. He also works as set, exhibition and costume designer at museums, libraries and theatres. The artist leads the art team of Mikri Arktos publications. Georgiadis has had solo exhibitions at İstanbul Concept Gallery since 2019 and has taken place at group exhibitions. He lives and works in Athens.
At his exhibition “Come Back” that he dedicated to Cavafy, we were at the eternity the artist transferred to paper by distilling the poet’s portraits, Alexandria, the city Cavafy was born and lived in, İstanbul, the place his roots were, wandering the poet’s immortal verses, from the way of light and darkness, Cavafy’s being. Being old, the cities we live in, cities that “pursue us”, images, the eternity of works of art we were molded in their lines, verses. In his last exhibition, this time we are with his personal reading, the impressions of his journeys, the films, books, writers and poets that have their places in him. The artist’s dreams, myths, poets, writers, directors, cities he embraces, human traces in cities, at discreet places. He says he reads and travels a klot, he collects them inside and reflects them on his art. Murathan Mungan, Attila İlhan, Tarkovsky, Nobel prized Greek poets George Seferis, Kiki Dimoula, Italian writer, poet Luigi Pirandello, directors Paolo and Vittoria Taviani, Paolo Sorrentino are the artists who have been the source of inspiration for him. We see a piece of work that has been inspired by Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia”, pictures inspired by verses from Mungan and İlhan. And İstanbul, a black and white street in Cihangir, very near the gallery. The artist says: “There’s no colour in İstanbul in winter, it is only black and white.” Üsküdar, a place the sun winks. Fatih, always crowded, everybody is on the rush, but there are people who slow down and look around, magnificent mosques and light at the background, shining on the shadows of people. Doors, windows, stairs, passages. Darkness, light. It seems some ways open to darkness, some to light. It is always assumed that light is good and darkness is bad, but the artist is not sure. We cannot ignore our shadowy part, our darkness, Jung is in our minds. Yeniköy is also a favourite place of the artist. Italy, Greece and Athens are also with us. Georgiadis likes riding his motorbike on the streets of İstanbul. The hope of spring shows itself with all the darkness-light phenomenon. The spring coming slowly, finding its place in us as well but its need for our struggles, the need of our movement. As Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes in her “Women Running With Wolves”: “If you don’t go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.”
This exhibition made me call Georgiadis the artist of my dreams. It is as if one of the pictures, “Capri, Faraglioni” depicts a dream of mine that I have been dreaming of since my childhood. The rocks on the sea, the ship that I am on the voyage tries to sail through the rocks, the sun facing us, I am frightened, I do not know whether we can sail there but we always do. In addition, as I was coming back from Zonguldak in the evening, the scene of a boat far away, all alone in the sea surrounded by steep rocks has been engraved in my mind. The artist has drawn a similar scene on a lake. The artist’s dreams are mingled with our dreams, our darkness. Do we want to find our dreams, the images that are beyond, the touch of memory in those breathing pictures? The gallery, the universe of eternal whispers, the totality of points beyond colours, the parts finding their places in our depths by seasonal turns, the friendship of artistic existence. As William S. Burroughs indicates in his “Queer”: “No one is really alone. You are part of everything alive.”
Note: You may reach Andreas Georgiadis’ catalogue here https://ageorgiadis.gr/work/mythology-ii-a-personal-mythology