Divine Transitions
07 - 12 Sep. 2024 / Iazul Morilor Center / Buzău, Romania
Opening 17:30 Saturday 07 Sep.
We are thrilled to announce our latest exhibition Divine Transitions, featuring works by Haris. A collection that delves into the themes of transformation and transcendence, exploring the divine aspects in each and everyone of us.
A tapestry of colors, textures and eras unfurls before the viewer when they come across the works of Haris Germanidis. Fayum portraiture, the burnished colors of the Renaissance, the light-and-shadows play of the Baroque.
The subjects of his art portraits are as nuanced as the figures of the French Romantics, especially Delacroix and Gericault, and as Hellenic in feel as the drawings of Greek painter Yiannis Tsarouchis.
Photography captures the ephemeral, the fleeting moment that may either reveal or conceal the truth of the moment. Art photography, in the case of Haris Germanidis, only reveals, by following the reverse process of that technique known as pentimento - wherein layers of representation, older studies of a subject, overlap, each new one covering the other. Through the use of colour, light, and mixed media, Germanidis evokes the hidden layers of the sitter, ones that plain photography cannot reveal. All the different layers of the subject's psyche and the aura they emanate successfully coexist in the finished portrait for all the world to see.
There is a sense of sobriety and almost religious sacredness in many of his portraits, but the meaning behind each one is in the eyes of the beholder. As in all fine art works the artist does not 'mean', they suggest, the viewer perceives this through their own personal filter. In my eyes, the deliberate choice of the sombre elements in the sitters' pose and invokes the transcendent that exists in the secular, the sacred in the profane, the soul inhabiting the body.
That revelation is a breach into the unknown. It is no coincidence some indigenous tribes refused to have their photos taken, in fear that the photograph would 'steal' their souls. For souls are precious. But art can protect them. The artist that is Germanidis practices his craft to liberate the sitters' spirit and bring it forth into the light. And then works his magic to celebrate them.
Maria Haka Flokos
Architect /author
Architect /author