Curation of Exhibition and Text: Vicky Pericleous,
Artist/Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Art, Cyprus University of Technology.
In his work The Death of Christ or The Lamentation of Christ (1483), Andrea Mantegna choreographs in space a series of asymmetrical paradoxes. He lays from the pillow, the inclined, towards the viewer, body of the dead Christ, on the cold marble. The cold marble follows the colour of the dead Christ. The body of the dead Christ becomes the cold marble. Palms and soles, a sad spectacle. He nails our gaze with these mathematical re-locations in what is left. Us at the feet of Christ. Mary, Magdalene and John by the side of the dead. Look.
No blood.
No water.
Mantegna constitutes a panorama of death while performing a rupture in the system of illusionary perspective. He blows up the head. He shortens, paradoxically, the feet. He places at the centre of the spectacle the covered genitals of the dead Christ.
He intensifies the drama of the scene. He remains cold in his decisions, by placing the covered genitals of the dead Christ at the centre of the scene.
*This deviating perspective on space and re-presentation could offer parallel views and readings on time and history.
In Geri, the place where Kyriakos Theocharous grew up and lives, archaeological discoveries brought to light ancient graves and settlements. Under the soil, there are fragments of other lives.
At his exhibition at Hambis Municipal Printmaking Museum in Nicosia, Theocharous presents a site-responsive installation, where he puts forward an ambiguous landscape.
Every day, Theocharous picks up collectibles of different types and times. He remains devoted to this walking route at Geri, turning his gaze towards what has been left. Under the light of the Mediterranean, which dried out the land of Geri, the rivers of the area and whatever is abandoned there. At his exhibition, Theocharous forms anew, a space out of fragments and almost abstracted configurations, creating as such, a rupture in our system of perception as to these re-presentations. He intensifies the drama of the scene by leaving gaps in his narrative: in respect to the acts that are being documented, the events that have taken place, in what remains. He brings the carcasses of his findings at first sight. Us across the space. He reduces his own presence.
He remains cold in his decisions by bringing in the middle of the spectacle only this: the in-between-ess. Look.
No bones.
No hair.
Theocharous constitutes, after all, a panorama of viewpoints of this becoming-place.
*This deviating perspective on time and history could offer parallel views and readings on space and re-presentation.
