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by Chrysoula Xouveroudi
Art Historian
His last artistic statement gives us the opportunity
to get in touch once more with the inner ‘mystery’ of art, which
constantly seeks to escape from conventional aesthetic judgements
deriving from established curators, cultural institutions and movements.
In his case painting embodies the artist’s will to interpret the world
by juxtaposing lines and colours, diminishing light, directing the
‘whole’ and ‘the void’ for the sake of artistic revelation. However,
this representation unfolds on a surface, beyond the stereotypes and the
omnipotence of the canvas, which was previously characterized by
another use. The shoe-tree becomes in this case the vehicle of pictorial
expression as it leaves space for empirical narration. The artist
eagers to capture the energy of a live material, namely wood, as well as
the existential dimension of time by engaging individual with
collective memory.
Since the 1980’s into the highly fluid atmosphere of
postmodernism, the ‘Zeitgeist’-the spirit of our times, seems to favour
summarizing (a synopsis) and retrospection. Since Modernism’s
frantic expectations of continual innovation, a return has been aspired
to the reservoir of culture, to nature, to everyday life, to all those things
avant-gardes were opposed to. On the other hand, the two-dimensional
surface, which since the Renaissance dominated pictorial space, opening
thus -according to Alberti- a window to the world on illusory terms and
heightening the relationship between ‘res’ (thing) and reality, has been
challenged throughout the 20th century.
A new visual reality is pushed now in order to
register space and time as key-role features in human experience. In
that way, the shoe-tree by being a three-dimensional object is
outstanding and sets off its plasticity as a reminiscent of the process
of its original construction. At the same time, it finally fosters the
feeling of familiarity with the viewer. Furthermore, this challenge
operates in a bidirectional way as long as the shoe-tree with its
curvature, the limited space left for painting, as well as its own
identity, stimulates on one hand inspiration and on the other requires
the artist’s mental alertness. Being
an object that ‘acts autonomously’ in its own space-time, playing its
own role and bringing out a special relationship with people, the
shoe-tree is disguised the ‘artistic mantle’ in order to reveal
pictorial and tactile values.
According to the above, the modernistic vocabulary
continues to maintain its timeliness. The postmodern artist does not
ignore the modernistic echo, but realizes it through a variant light in
its mature expression rather than its revolutionary birth. In the
aftermath of August Strindberg’s trenchant remark that “on a thin layer of reality imagination weaves new designs”,
Eliades narrates stories that first of all appeal to him and can easily
be read by the viewer. Sometimes these are intended for he appeals to
more active viewers, who have an inclination and wish to interpret a
personal and intimate world that surpasses reality. The symbols are
signified by their creator, who artificially uses the particular
features of the pictorial surface in order to induce the initiate to a more thorough approach of the work and stir up the dialogue between the two of them as well as with the artwork itself.
The line vibrates following the curve of the surface,
while colour and texture co-operate to support the form. The tone
deepens to strengthen the existential persistence of time, the texture
evokes the touch and the form, vivid and meaningful, enables -with the
aid of light- composition. In this composition, characterized mainly by
parataxis, he exploits the horizontal axis, thus reinforcing the style
of his narration through the dialogue between the “whole” and the
“void”. By allowing skillfully the
‘void' to lead the eye and the imagination into infinity, the
representation is defined by the object and at the same time goes beyond
it, as it conceals and reveals the pictorial surface. Sometimes, the
connection to the original concept is immediate and the artist, bearing
in mind trompe l’oeil and making good use of wood cracks, deceives our
view so as to convince us that this is a real worn-out shoe. Realism and
its surpassing occupy him generally in his artistic course and recur
with the same impetus in all his latest work.
Nostos
(homecoming), the return to a personal homeland with visions, images
and traces gleaned from the legacy of both individual and collective
memories, defines Eliades’
creation. Whether as a standalone object or as a co-star in a new
artistic proposal (lamps are a separate group in his latest work), the
shoe-trees revive their relationship with the current art audience and
become ambassadors of a wounded, but not lost, innocence.