These sculpted creatures were presented as part of the ‘Hortus Clausus’ exhibition, held at the atrium of the Benaki Museum in February 2014. Starting off from older painting works of Kostis Georgiou, this small retrospective exhibition presented the experimentations and accomplishments of the sculptor-painter over the past twenty years. It comprised approximately 25 compositions, some of which were made of hammered iron and stainless steel, while others were initially moulded in clay and later transferred to a longer-lasting, more grandiose material: copper, bronze, polyester or aluminum.
The artist’s concern is to study the boundaries between the human and the animalistic, the logical and the illogical, the frightening and the grotesque. At the same time, to immerse his artistic fantasies, those creatures that exist between the obscurity of darkness and the serenity of light, in the realism of the sculpted forms. Are they daemons from a time before the fall, mechanical super-flowers and trees, or zoomorphic puppets of the future? Do they tread on a safety tradition or are they being tried on quicksand? Are they fire walking in a self-destructing mode or are they preparing to take off? Do they operate as teams or are they eager to sever the bonds of dependence? One can discern in these sculptures a constant tendency to merge drama with the farcical, the rhetoric of the form with its self-negation, intensity with playfulness, the “pessimism” of the form with the “optimism” of the radiant color. In other words, antithesis giving way to thesis.
Kostis Georgiou has presented his work in more than 90 solo and 150 group exhibitions worldwide.
