The 15 portraits of Vasilis Soulis, 1,00*1,00, oil on canvas, make up a universe almost immaterial. Forms intimately familiar, all from the artist's surroundings, extend and deepen the concept of portrait. In his new solo exhibition at the ena contemporary art gallery of Valaoritou Street 9c (edited by Iris Kritikou), Vasilis Soulis displays psychic anatomist’s properties as he removes housings to arrive at an alloy of darkness and light. "Portrait photography is the effort to interpret the other," he says. "Unconsciously, you also present yourself".
Born in Athens in 1981, a graduate of the School of Fine Arts with Professor Yiannis Psychopedis, Vassilis Soulis has the gift of inner observation. He moves predictable rules to deliver interpretations of beauty. As a viewer, one feels the variety of human types, all flowing in fluid or airy form to a common tank. "Trying to attribute the psyche of people I used a technique that was wetter and more transparent," he says. "The tone differences in the portrait are very close, there are too many halftones, the light is marginal, as I tried to give the figure inwardness and depth".
Looking at the forms from a close distance, they seem to be like geophysical atlases exposed to rain and sun, eyes on withdrawal or straight showdown. The form tends to subdue to a light of undetermined origin. "The color is dull, gloomy and mild," says Vasilis Soulis. "Liquid dye creates fluidity in the shape I need to get out of the areas I do not want to stress and have them stay in subsidence." The more portraits stand opposite to photorealism, the more they are illuminated internally. It is the course of a dematerialization.
