• KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

    KERASIA TOULIATOU

     “Back to the Lost Innocence” by Leyteris Kalospyros, writer

    Leyteris Kalospyros presents the work of Kerassia Touliatou, based on her exhibition “Dream Fragments”.

    The faces in the portraits by Kerassia Touliatou seem scattered in fluid, permeable spaces, within unfamiliar environments with cold temperatures, lacking external boundaries.Even when the figures are enclosed by a piece of floor, its surface is small, restricted; the floor seems frail and as if covered by a dreamlike haze. And it is this particular lack of clearly defined spatial relationships, the placement of people against backgrounds that may potentially stretch towards infinity, which leads us to presumea possible connection between the portraits and the landscapes in the new exhibition by KerassiaTouliatou. Itmaybethattheelimination of spatial dimensionsin the artist’s portraits suggests that her metaphysical landscapes act as an extension of the psyche of the persons depicted in them. Maybe the landscapes acquire the shades and forms revealed by the emotional state of these people; maybe they are the reflections of their existential angst, their dread of the void, the unseen and the unspoken, of everything that exceeds them and that due to their young age they cannot begin to fathom.

    Speculations about the symbolism of the landscapes and the human figures in the paintings can thrive to infinity; this is probably one of the principal aims of the exhibition by Touliatou – the manifold, wide interpretations that never come to pass as superficial proclamations. For instance, the girl in most of her portraits appears sad; is she actually sad though, or just mellow? And, if she is indeed sad, is it for reasons beyond herself, forcing her to banish herself to a temporary, soothing, emotional refuge, the kind that only under age imagination can provide?Could the reason for the girl’s disappointment be that it is self-inflicted, could it be attributed to her innate sensitivity, her perpetual mood swings? Is perhaps the inherent gloominess of childhood to blame for her condition? What if the girl is not sad but simplylost in her dreams? Or maybe she is sad and pensive at the same time? Or irritated and upset about something, minor or major, that bothers her? Then again, all the guesswork about the girl’s emotional state might not be at all what Touliatou had in mind; maybe the girl’s gaze and stance, combined with the vague and dreamy background before which she stands, reflect the artist’s notion about the slow passage of time during childhood. The viewer is compelled to make assessments that induce new hypotheses, which in turn lead to novel attempts toward the interpretation and understanding of the works. No interpretation is final, the deeper meaning of the portraits is wide-ranging, it permeates the landscapes.

    In Touliatou’s portraits and landscapes the questions raised by the viewerconverge on the horizontal and vertical axes set by man and nature, man and his own nature. As I focused my attention on the landscapes in an attempt to decode the shapes and tones that stand out in them, so I could then proceed to make all the necessary comparisons with the portraits in order to form my personal, unbiased conclusions, I was reminded by association of the British painter William J. Turner; he not only managed to exemplify the principles of romanticism in his art, but he also paved the way with his work for the outset of impressionism. In The Story of Art Gombrich writes about Turner: “In Turner, nature always reflects and expresses a man’s emotions. We feel small and overwhelmed in the face of powers we cannot control, and are compelled to admire the artist who had nature’s forces at his command.”

    Hence, Touliatou has adopted Turner’s approach in her landscapes; physical nature becomes indeed a reflection of human nature. Nevertheless, she does not reduce herself to depicting nature schemes in order to comply with somevague and ambitious concept, which would provethat our vision and understanding of true nature is quite narrow, as compared to the subjective and probably misleading picture we acquire with our senses. The artist gives substance to persons, whose psyche is reflected in nature, and who in turn strive to implement their own idea of order in the natural chaos. Her landscapes, therefore, are not mere reproductions of scenes from the natural world, but represent the rural environment the way the particular persons depicted in her portraits envision it. Touliatou’s thoughts and ideas are diffused and deflected on these people, who become thus intermediate carriers of knowledge. They are the bearers of departed souls, whotrack the artist’s gradual withdrawal from the reality of her life and her transition to the realms of fantasy and dreams.

    What choice is then there for the viewer, but to see the landscapes through the moist, blurry, angry, dreamy, and sad eyes of the girl and the boy in her portraits? His thoughts follow those of thechildren in a whirlwind of fragments of dreams and leftover memories, of the rejections and the phobias of youth. Touliatou’s paintings become thus the nostalgic vessels of the viewer’s imagination inviting him to travel with them into the timeless and vast world of his own memories, back to those long, endless days and the hard and lonely nights, when, like every other kid, he was trying to better understand himself as Another.

    Leyteris Kalospyros – writer

    Translation: Cleopatra Fatourou