Lab

PARIS GIACHOUSTIDIS

Exhibition duration
01. April – 06. May 2022

A painting or drawing rarely reveals at first sight what really makes it special. Moreover, the viewer will not easily get access to or “read” the artist’s intentions, his main idea, or the artistic questions which made him work on this issue. The meaning and the importance of the work in the eyes of the creator therefore frequently remain veiled to the viewer. When taking a closer look on the other hand, it is difficult to return to a “naive”, non-biased analysis of an artwork: We are visually attracted by those attributes of an artwork which stand out in our individual perspective and tend to overlook other aspects.

Paris Giachoustidis is an artist who typically does not provide easy ways to decode his work. We can discover juxtapositions and strata of brilliantly executed layers, motifs or facets (prevalently with painterly gestures) with technically rough components, which seem technically immature or simplistic. Figural and abstract elements are combined on the same canvas or paper, as are depth and surfaces, allegedly contradicting each other. The same superficial disaccord unites the approaches of classical painting, naive and folk art. The idea of using specific techniques is not about flaunting craftmanship in order to represent a composition in a photorealistic way, but a way to introduce a personal perspective on picture material which he found on the internet or in his daily life – it is a process of artistic appropriation of those found pictures. On the other hand, one gets the impression that the artist “destroys” those (pseudo-) realistic elements by adding those allegedly unsophisticated traits, forms, and figures. This conjunction of styles embraces the two aspects. A previous, time-consuming phase of the work is exposed to a high risk of failure and collapse by “ruining” it with a roughly painted layer, a suicidal moment on the canvas or paper. This practice of exploring the frontiers and getting personally involved is intended to develop an innate perspective on aesthetics, which questions the viewer’s habits and comfort – he wants to take us by the hand to reflect on painting and drawing in a fundamental way.

Peter Ungeheuer