In Italy there has been little talk about the 6th Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale entitled “Vivid Jiangnan Three-dimensional Suzhou”, a significant event for international art, recently concluded with great success.This Biennale is young and in continuous growth, supported by the entire Chinese region and the prestigious local university, and it offers a rich international art scene; this year it was curated by Pick Keobandith through a dynamic perspective.
Works by Kostis Georgiou in 2023 Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale, photo courtesy the 6th Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale
The homepage of the website displays the work of Kostis Georgiou, a Greek artist already known in China, as well as in many Western countries. His artistic career can be interpreted as an intimate and passionate research in space and time and, together, a continuous reflection on his own limits. These are complex suggestions, expressed through sculpture, painting, drawing and immersive installations, that generate successful aesthetic interweavings. The artist, although deeply tied to his Greekness, imbued with the eager search for harmony, was able to mature his artistic work in a context of linguistic experimentation, and he mainly took inspiration from the exponents of the historical avant-garde, paying extreme attention to the introspective aspect of the work. An articulated and multiform stylistic journey emerges from his works exhibited at the Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale, full of shapes that change over time. The contrast between the biomorphic images in search of liberation and the imposing cosmic eternity in dominant, and this struggle is rendered through the movement of the figures and the combination of complementary colors.
Works by Kostis Georgiou in 2023 Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale, photo courtesy the 6th Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale
The prevailing use of the shades of red, in both paintings and sculptures, helps to accentuate the drama of the uninterrupted conflicts in which he tries to involve the viewer. Georgiou’s painting explicitly and provocatively recalls Francis Bacon’s existentialism and his affinities with some aspects of surrealism, rejecting instead the nihilism found in the works of the great Irish painter. In his sculptures he develops an aesthetic generated by the union between the sacredness of primitive forms and the harmony of classicism. The flexible organic shapes, thanks to the successful game of lights and shadows and full and empty spaces, manage to dialogue with the surrounding space, often in an intense and conflictual way. The Greek artist’s gaze seems attentive to collecting aesthetic experiences of the past, sometimes turning to Brancusi, sometimes to Moore, with the intention of attributing to his works the value of a new monumentality. The viewer is involved in a real exploration and is invited to participate in the symbiotic relationship of the works with the surrounding space.
Works by Kostis Georgiou in 2023 Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale, photo courtesy the 6th Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennale
By recognizing the stylistic and formal plurality of Georgiou, in an attempt to define his artistic style, particularly in sculptural art, one could speak of an expressed naturalism attentive to emotion and marked by an alternative monumentality which seeks to free itself from the obsession with Greek idealism. His sculptures located in the Chinese exhibition emphasize the details of individuality by interpreting the emotions of the subject in his continuous communicative research. It is a dialectical and proactive art, since the existential battle imposed by both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, often tragic and full of suffering, generates communicative openings avoiding implosive closures.
Efthalia Rentetzi
Info:
Kostis Georgiou
13/04/2023- 25/06/2023
6th Suzhou Jinji Lake Biennial
www.sipac.gov.cn
is a contemporary art magazine since 1980
NO COMMENT