Apostolos Georgiou

Untitled

Untitled is characteristic of the artist’s practice. Georgiou Apostolos invites us into a scene of cinematic tension. In the foreground, a man is kneeling with his hands on his head. One can feel the man in the painting tremble. We see neither the face nor the weapon of the second man. The proof of the crime is absent, as if the threat is psychological and moral, rather than physical. This painting imagines a representation of a balance of power. We see the consequences of a world in crisis, a failing system on several levels: human relationships, between a Greek government and its citizens and the demands of Brussels vis-à-vis Greece.This work is an oeuvre of modern man, one who tries to escape the feeling of anxiety and solitude caused by the incomprehension of the surrounding environment. The maelstrom of the financial and climatic crisis, wars, and population displacements is continuously and aggressively pushed by mass media, and it is through this that we can witness a man lost, submissive or fleeing his fate. The work of Apostolos Georgiou is inescapably political. He states: “The way we read art makes it political or not […] A painting must have the tension to provoke us to look at it; to wake us up from a state of indifference. Then the rest will come” (Frieze magazine, 2014).