Listen to the silence. Listen to those who are silent. There is no language more deafening than that of the gaze. M.S.
Once upon a time painting was a window that introduced the world to a visible revelation. Today painting experiences a crisis in its very essence, and if it doesn't want to be consumed by illustrational naivete, it should delve deep into the invisible, and render it perceivable. In other words it should render internal life sensate. Which is by no means easy! Comparable, difficult subjects are what the daring, at times bordering on insolently so, artist Anna-Maria Papadimitriou deals with. Her painting is luscious in its use of colour yet sensitive, proportioning her cloth equally of free improvisation and conscious self-restraint. In other words, she plays with boundaries (to their outer limits). Her compositions seek an inner light, submit internal landscapes, ascertain the secrets of the night with questions of the daytime. Oftentimes pleasurable, decorative solutions exorcise the evil borne by the cold greens or the blacks. Pas mal. In short this is gestural, emotional painting that seeks a path amongst the leading exponents of lyrical abstraction, including Soulages, Wols, Riopelle, Hartung, and Mathieu, but also Greek artists including Maltezos, Svoronos, Lefakis, Kessanlis and others. At issue is the fact that consistency and continuity should be present in the history of artistic forms so that things do not happen in vain. And furthermore so works do not rot before the indifferent gaze of ignorant or presumptuous viewers and each generation can learn from the previous one. - Does such painting have a raison d' etre nowadays? - Can an audience be formulated otherwise, as people nowadays have television vulgarity stuffed down their throats on a daily basis? (as we have degenerated into a nation of TV addicts?) - Is there time for contemplation before a painted image that seeks what is self-evident? In other words, to move our senses, without at the same time extorting an emotional response? - Don't be in a hurry to respond. As we've already said: these are difficult issues to discuss...
20-01-10 Manos Stefanidis
P.S.: The system requires time without "history", the word without its meaning, an image without its flesh.
P.P.S.: The past, and its infinite time, are forms of eternity to which each of us can lay claim.