The new solo exhibition of Mark Hadjipateras is presented at a.antonopoulou.art.

 

As art historian Christoforos Marinos notes, « Mark Hadjipateras’s recent output reveals his ongoing interest in the art of color. In this new series of paintings, the artist openly appropriates the color palette of abstract modernist paintings. Concurrently produced over the last two years, his paintings pay homage to leading exponents of American abstraction, including Stuart Davis, Balcomb Greene, and Charles Houghton Howard, as well as leading exponents of European modernism, such as Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. The inventive use of color and emotional exuberance on offer in these artists’ paintings engendered the concept of bold appropriation attempted by Hadjipateras and his development of a new, utterly personal iconography.

 

The outcome of extensive research, this series communicates Hadjipateras’s sustained engagement with the contribution of colour to establishing, sustaining, and helping decipher the modern. Modernist artists’ colours are especially attractive because they have an inherent potential for transformation. The smoothness and fluidity that the colours imbue on the forms, their capacity to evoke space and conjure volumes and multiple planes, and, above all, the symbolic nature of colour and its influence on psychology, are the acclaimed Greek-American artist’s main fields of investigation.

 

Contrary to the chromophobic impulse largely prevalent in Western thought and culture (as David Batchelor reminds us in his famous book), Mark Hadjipateras’s paintings celebrate colour by highlighting its positive value. Moreover, his new paintings are augmented by a series of sculptures in direct dialogue with the biomorphic forms depicted in the paintings. These abstract sculptures possess an elegance and eerie beauty reminiscent of frozen plants or flowers. Essentially, both his paintings and sculptures convey a sense of joy and fulfil the fundamental need for visual pleasure ».

 

The viewer will notice geometric shapes. Curves and parts of the circle converse/contrast with right angles and triangles, recalling femininity and masculinity. Many of the works are dominated by an elliptical shape, formed by the meeting of two mandorla circles (in Italian means almond). It is a shape that Hadjipateras uses repeatedly in his sculptures and paintings. Its resemblance to an olive leaf, an eye, a boat hull, a fish, a vulva refers to multiple concepts such as harvest, cultivation, fertility, the sea and knowledge.

 

Text translated by Dimitris Saltabassis

 

Opening: Thursday 27/01, hours 16:00–21:00
Through 19/03/2022