Painting
is an independent, pragmatic practice, but at the same time something with inherent
magical properties. Being in my lab is identical to being in my private theatre.
Paula Rego
In his
first solo exhibition, Vasilis Soulis submits a series of paintings, mostly in
large dimensions, depicting the solitary portraits of his intimates in
paradoxical, sometimes, annoying ways. Many of these paintings have initially
been created as smaller drafts, each experimenting with different movements,
expressions, moods and compositional elements. They make immediate references
to people preoccupying almost entirely the artist’s optical and emotional scope:
his parents, other relatives, friends and young children who live in
neighboring apartments are portrayed by Soulis in oxymoron and unexpected postures
without the slightest intention of embellishment; initially as ‘directed’
photographic snapshots and then as painting portraits where models are dressed
in clothes he chooses from their
daily garments, converting them into makeshift costumes, occupying almost entirely
the living space of the canvas and eliminating with their dominant presence the
external environment they belong to. The objects, isolated from their natural
environment but connected to his portraits, are presented scattered and
magnified thus acquiring a new substance: a worn suitcase or a red children's
train (where the seemingly innocent game turns into something latently harsh).
Being painted in different versions, they turn into symbols in a narration of the
invisible spacetime where the person portrayed resides. While painting, Soulis
abandons the safety of a fixed plan and skilfully leads the viewer’s gaze to
the basic core of his subject through the dense, dark colors, their perpetual
melting and rewriting, the density
and non finito included in the painting process.
Influences
from Lucian Freud, Paula Rego and Jean Rustin are visible in the painter’s
work, where the depiction of the natural existence of his figures gradually
turns into an obsessive representation of their solitary confinement in a
predetermined ‘internal’ environment. Observing the new artist’s figures, we
will probably agree with Freud’s view that ‘there is a mystery hovering over
the scene-painting’, ‘something more or less expected, but certainly an
individual style of painting, through which the artwork gradually emerges, even
when we cannot exactly know the source of inspiration’. What one paints is
added to our understanding of him; of the sources and skills that led him to
this project. Through the painter’s eyes, the image gets an unexpected look and
acquires a particular characteristic which according to Lawrence Gowing ‘nobody
had previously observed’. We may even recognize in Vasilis’ Soulis work some of
the principles underlying Paula’s Rego painting improvisations as in a similar
way his portraits, apparently representing his family, reverse the obvious
truth of the image, turning it into something unfamiliar, or more precisely,
according to Judith Collins: ‘into a deconstructed intimacy that does not
protect but sharpens, tying us to the innermost in a riveting and reflexive
observation relationship’.
His
portraits, giving vent to the imagination of their creator as well as that of
the viewer, are not easily arranged in the canvas. They are displayed in full
body swelling, without actually looking at the viewer; in angular or serpentine
poses. Choking within the specified canvas, they balance in straight but
unstable positions. They twist, curl up, crawl and bend as they detect the
‘mystery’ of color, the raw material of the representational substance that makes
eye contact exciting. The paintings refer to the fragile and sometimes tough
nature of the portrayed images, the underlying joy and sorrow that along with their
physical characteristics, rush to the canvas.
Through
his work, that moves to a compression frame which cannot be broken, the
painter’s personal memories, tensions and childhood pressures emerge; the
chaotic but precious parts of his personal experiences. His images emerging
from his memory or imagination are full of inventive and often suggestive
content. Thus, they organize claustrophobic interiors and hostile areas with
hard shadows. Along with the artist’s unconscious thoughts, his paintings
depict the underlying human cruelty and the potential humiliation as well as a desire
to escape from the strict moral and social codes governing these figures that
by definition cannot be broken.
Looking
ultimately at this fledgling painting by Soulis, we can also refer to its theatrical
nature, which as in Paula’s Rego case the characters are exposed like
theatrical heroes, setting up scenes in places where the painter himself
curates and provides. Finally, we can even attempt a precipitation in the
painter’s subconscious, who as complex processor, importing data, exporting
to a different connotation: beyond their theatrical connotation, Vasilis’ Soulis
images are still portrayed as real beings in the belief that ‘nature itself has
a wider variety and more unexpected versions than any invented field can
include.’
Iris Kritikou January 2009
