 In this visual art project, a legend, Marlene Dietrich, is presented in a personal point of view. The way her portrait has been processed, resembles a depiction of her very own world. This is not about a mere portrayal of a persona. The face of Dietrich is only the motive. This penetrating look reminds the analysis, through a visual arts perception, that a biologist would perform on a tissue. It reflects the passion of a scientist who hopes to discover the truth. In these works, the science of biology, as an educational background, appears to be interconnected with the artistic perception and activity. It facilitates the methodology of this creative procedure (observation-documentation-analysis-synthesis) and the way reality is perceived. Marlene Dietrich is approached with an attitude of radiography and analysis. Different techniques are used, not because of need to flaunt any skills, but because of a need to perform. At the same time, a safety distance from hyperanalisis is maintained, in order not to shatter the spontaneity and randomness found in the syntheses. While these particular works are emotionally charged, sentimentalisms are almost absent and, they focus in the substantive influence of Dietrich in the art world. The agony to document invisible fragments of this legend’s personality, through a psychanalytic approach, is expressed with a repetitive obsession. The exact same pose is rehearsed dozens of times. Every still in these linocut print monotypes resembles a trial, which prepares the next work. At the end of the reading of each portrait, there is always a question. A sense of incompleteness. This is as well a prominent reason for which the works are interesting. They render an artistic undertaking which captures the aura Dietrich has passed on to the younger generations.

Marlene Dietrich

These works deal closely with architecture. By moving unrestricted among diverse materials and techniques,they focus mainly on volumes, geometry and light and his artistic code is based on the dynamic tension between incomplete geometric forms (rectangular, square, or round forms and lines) and bright colours. They depict volumes of buildings in dramatic close up shots. He extracts the object from its frame of reference, he acquires it, annuls it, redirects it, and proposes unlimited potential approaches to the object. The lack of frame of reference and scale increase the formalistic approach, stress on typology and install these works in a purely aesthetic ground. The subject of the photograph dissolves and disappears from the project, while the artist is orientated towards a purely abstract artistic expression. The surface of the work displays its own reality, instead of acting as an exhibit of the object in frame. Autonomous structures of shapes and colors are created, bearing an independent aesthetic appeal.Photographs of architectural details, volumes of water or sky as photographed through the buildings, become the starting point for collage and painted works - the other two sections of his work. In collage, the photographer shred photos into equally sized parts, and then recomposes them in a way that seems incidental. These works refer to automation, intuition and the random composition, that we find both in Hans Arp’s early work inspired by Dada (Collages with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, c. 1917) and in contemporary scatter art. The final work relates to the original image, but simultaneously eliminates it, always bearing a reference to instinctive, or otherwise almost automatic artistic creation. In the section of overpainted photographs, the usual canvas of the painting is now being replaced by a photographic basis, a "substrate". The lines intersect on the printed image and create a strong sense of texture as the artist modifies the length and intensity of the lines on the paper. Subtle shades are made, while playing with the reflection of light and tonal variations in an almost monochromatic environment. This series of works are characterized by an almost hypnotic, rhythmic flow that recalls the automatic drawing. The hand moves automatically, effortlessly, revealing the unconscious. In these works, the relation between the starting point and the final form of the work is never consolidated. They explore the mental, perhaps even spiritual effects of light, color and form, giving them a metaphysical aspect. Beauty is to be found in form, space and light, while architectural details convert in abstract harmonic structures.

Licht und Verklärung

This series of photography artworks makes a clear and basic reference to light. The intention behind the creation of these works is to depict multiple artificial horizons. Abstraction and the horizontality of the forms are two elements of these works that can be observed immediately. The creation of ambient fields, in which the depth of a form is incapable of being perceived, has been achieved by repetitive switching of light and dark areas, usually without any clear indication of borders, and by a change from one color to another. The strict horizontal direction creates a sense of expansion beyond the left and right edges of each work.
  The starting point of these works is abstract close-up photographs of interior and exterior architectural lighting details. In each work, two or three of these photos have been pasted one on top of the other to create layers, and the opacity has been adjusted to produce the final image.
  Enchanted by the works of Dan Flavin, James Turrell, Spencer Finch and Olafur Eliasson, and struck by the importance of light in architecture, which is owed in part to the fact that substance is not perceivable by the human eye without the flow of light, I was inspired to create landscapes by capturing and materializing light, an immaterial element. A significant source of my interest is the knowledge that light has been the concern of scientists, philosophers and architects throughout the history of human intelligence, from antiquity until the present day.


Artificial Horizons

This series of photographic works presents structural elements of the interior and the masonry of old derelict residential buildings that are exposed on partition walls, or are shared with the adjoining ones. This attempt is approached through the acknowledgement of the importance of the sensory organs and the brain, as the major organ of the central nervous system that processes the collected data, for perceiving the environment in which man lives. It is commonly accepted that vision is on the top of the hierarchy of the senses. However, despite the fact that the representations in the works can be ‘seen’, for they are produced through the medium of photography, the variety of textures and three-dimensional structures, as the most prominent features of these works, can nevertheless also indirectly stimulate the sense of touch, through an imaginary way, a kind of synaesthesia. Considering them as ‘urban palimpsests’, which contain important historic information of a city, an ever-changing environment, they trigger memory and become a pool from which collected data of the past can be drawn, so that future pathways can be designed for cities. While ‘eye-witnessing’ extraordinary changes in this era of technological revolution with impact on socio-political and financial fields of everyday life, touch has gained a major position in the ‘sensory arena’, even by replacing main means of communication, such as speech and handwriting. In relation to the fact that in the ever-rotating wheel of evolution, senses are by default in a dynamic state, the haptic plays a leading role on how law and normativity are adjusted by and at the same time lead to a balanced function in high-performance cultures.

Remains of a Fall

These works are a selection from a larger project, titled Fragments of Dystopia, which relates to fictional representations of intertemporal urban Dystopia. They aggregate fragments that depict socio-political, urban and cultural issues, and also structures of activity within the human habitat. A key tenet in these representations of elements of our decaying global community is a perceived relation between built environment and man. Urban fabric is seen here as an organism consisting of cells, tissues, organs and systems. Sometimes these works seem as layered "aerial x-rays", creating a kind of urban palimpsests that encode information on urbanization.
  From a formal point of view they resemble master plans of dystopic landscapes created by man, although he is absent. In this mapping of human geography these Kafkaesque fields are composed by hybridizing many elements: buildings, urban plans, mechanical branches, biological structures, archaeological plans, computer hardware networks and lettering that ranges from ancient symbols to binary code.
  Reflecting my views on the nature of architectural space, these can be considered as alternative blueprints. Beneath the chaotic geometry lies a narrative, the syntax of which reflects the current sweeping crises. Looking as though they might have been visual texts produced by machines, my works seek to give visual form to a new and ambiguous spatial world emerging from the interaction of various data gathered. This method opens architecture to a wide range of knowledge coming from different fields of thought and work, which is sorely needed in a time such as the present, characterized by increasing diversity in the human situation.

Fragments of Dystopia

SkinScapes is a series of works that set an altered topography, signifying the human skin as a landscape. Both, the visualized object and the way of its representational approach, are the outcome of a flowing sequence of inner thoughts and correlations. Having as a starting point questions and issues on our existence as living organisms one can recognize dogmatically that the skin is literally and figuratively shaping our first and basic residence of our biological and spiritual being. The skin delimitates us and separates us from our environment. The human body and its integrity are elements on which fundamental lawmaking is based upon. The human skin hosts receptors of temperature and mechanical pressure. In an era of the covid19 contagion, where social distancing is imposed by the scientific community in order to intercept the pandemic, haptics is shunt and touch looses ground in the hierarchy of the human senses. Dramatic close-up scans with unstable movement of a portable device, compose combinations of abstract glitch elements and realistic representations of the skin and its hair, which simulate imagings made during the various stages of a scientific research procedure in medical laboratories. In a way that follows a methodology, this systematic and meticulous examination approaches, investigates and detects the details that form the human shell.


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