ΠΟΛΥΠΤΥΧΟΝ COLLECTION
Confined within the strict geometric, rectangular format of the paper and its limited dimensions, anonymous and impersonal human figures—stripped of clothing, faces and distinguishing features, individual identity and difference, without even a clear distinction between male and female—move, float, emerge, or sway suspended like shadows in the darkness, caught in a state of emotional and psychological instability. Through the universal language of the body, they express a broad spectrum of dark emotions that constrain and enslave human nature. Within these vigorous, youthful bodies, it is not only external beauty that is represented, but also, symbolically reflected, the inner beauty—the psychological and spiritual beauty—of human beings who struggle, bend, are wounded, heal, and carry on.
The colour black is solid and uniform, silent and devoid of luminosity, inert yet simultaneously setting everything in motion according to its own rhythm. It suppresses difference, deconstructs space and time, and blurs vision and reason, allowing us to experience through our remaining senses. In darkness, we are not what we appear to be, but what we feel.
Black is evocative, autonomous and self-sufficient. It subjugates all other colours, symbolically representing inner emptiness and isolation, while revealing with semiotic clarity the intensity of dark emotions within the solitude of the human soul. The lighter, illuminated surfaces function symbolically as rays of hope.
Charcoal on paper is an ideal medium for this artistic approach because of its inherent transience and fleeting quality, signifying movement, change, evolution and transformation. The artistic process of drawing with charcoal embodies a “historical” relationship between drawing and the process of its creation, as it records every line, mark, shadow, blur, erasure, correction and layer of superimposition. The ephemeral nature of the medium corresponds to the fleeting, short-lived character of the dark emotions that imprison the human soul in moments of crisis. Experiencing and overcoming these states becomes a measure of, and lends meaning and value to, human existence.
The Manichaean contrast between darkness and the beams of light that selectively illuminate the human bodies like spotlights outlines, projects and idealises the language of the body. The contrast between black and the illuminated surfaces dramatically accentuates the volume of the bodies, their postures and gestures, magnetising and directing the viewer’s gaze while urging them to experience and identify with the emotions that emerge within the light of darkness. In this way, the artwork acquires an interactive dimension, as the viewer completes the artist’s work through the projection of their own personal and subjective psyche.
The protagonist of the work is each one of us, individually—and all of us, collectively.
A Collection of 22 Art Works
“People will always be enslaved to something. Slaves to ideals, slaves to fear, slaves to their own selves. And yet, paradoxically, we accept that our enslavement is a consequence of human nature itself.”
~ Elica Snake
