Paintings, 20/11/2007 – 19/01/2008

On Tuesday 20 November at 8 in the evening, Maria Demetriades opens the seventh solo exhibition of Yorgos Rorris.

The 9 large and 15 smaller portraits in the exhibition –nudes and body studies, respectively¬– make up the latest series from a decade of painstaking research into the human figure, which is placed always in the same setting: the artist’s own studio.

Yorgos Rorris draws his subjects from his everyday surroundings and chooses the familiar confines of his studio as the backdrop for his models. As his work progresses he seeks persistently the particular physical characteristics of each figure, at the same time delving into the subject’s inner world. During the long process of painting, which often becomes an act of mutual confession, space is often extended into new areas so as to take in the figure, mutating for the needs of each new composition and emerging as a different and autonomous setting each time.

The nude portraits (of young women, mostly) in the current exhibition, having shed the previous series’ evident signs of each model’s social standing and personal taste, reflect the painter’s systematic effort to reveal the new meaning that each personality ascribes to the immobile space, which is transformed by the gaze of the painter but also of the trained viewer. Walls, sometimes open and fluid and sometimes closed, are defined by the catalytic human presence during an ongoing course.

Duration of the exhibition: 20 November 2007 – 19 January 2008