Angelika Timns
A fascinating series of 20 paintings by Achilleas Christidis is currently on show at the Medusa Art Gallery in Kolonaki.
According to National Gallery curator Manos Stefanidis, the young artist is “one of the rockers of painting”.
In appraising his work, Stephanidis goes to say: “Christidis paints in order to tell us things, similar to things told us at other times by Jack Kerouac, Mingus, Sarah Vaughn, Jim Jarmusch, Count Basie and Peter Greenway. His paintings have the immediacy of a comic book and the intensity of a Miles Davis improvisation.
“Christidis offer us an aesthetic world consisting of figures fit together upside down, dogs, house-shadows, drunks, drifters, mirrors and blue walls. His independence is owed to the fact that he never set foot in the School of Fine Arts. Whatever he learnt, he did so on his own and he does it very well.
“In his present exhibition, his fantasies move into space, become mechanical toys and tree dimensional constructions. “They run on solar energy and imbibed alcohol”.
Manos Stefanidis
Achilleas Christidis one of the rockers of painting.He paints in order to tell us things, similar to things told us at other times by Jack Kerouac, Mingus, Sarah Vaughn, Jim Jarmusch, Count Basie and Peter Greenway. His paintings have the immediacy of a comic book and the intensity of a Miles Davis improvisation.It is a series of small shouts and large silences. It is a totally personal confession, a sequence of half-finished stories which, however, lay claim to a feeling of self-sufficiency. His drawing is abrupt, peculiar, as he is in the habit of looking at things from above - perhaps to better his underground painting.
“Christidis offer us an aesthetic world consisting of figures fit together upside down, dogs, house-shadows, drunks, drifters, mirrors and blue walls. His independence is owed to the fact that he never set foot in the School of Fine Arts. Whatever he learnt, he did so on his own and he does it very well. This is a scenario of self-sufficient forms which will never have to become a film. So much the better! He is a born story-teller like Jack London and you get the feeling that he’s lived his tales himself. In his present exhibition his fantasies move into space, become mechanical toys and three-dimensional constructions. They run on solar energy and – first and foremost – imbibed alcohol. Great. Tonight the bar will literally be called Vulcano. Just like a picture by Achilleas.
