In his latest works, which relate cryptographical, autobiographical stories, Andreas Golfinopoulos mingles the grandeur of nature with the bits and pieces that he draws forth from the sphere of oblivion. By giving free play to his imagination and by activating the language of associations, he manages to create dreamy spaces occupied by two-natured symbols: trees-cum-women in perpetual transmutation. These double-natured shapes are repeated from painting to painting, thus introducing the spectator into the magical process of metamorphosis. The stayed moments in time compose independent visual stories, while at the same time constituting a uniform story in progress, which, along with the fragmentary, submits the spectator to a spherical perusal of the total works.

Segments of outer reality and the subconscious, the works of Golfinopoulos blend happily with contradictory values. Freedom comes together with discipline, and the mind's anarchy with order and rationale. The golden mean and the geometric cuttings create the painterly base, structuring the canvas on which the delirium of vision and mind unfolds. The spectator discerns the hidden geometry - diffuse geometry, which does not deprive the works of their metaphysical hue and which, in any case, adheres to the laws of nature.

The ambighuous occupants of the utopian scenery are composed of staight lines, circles and curves whose diverse combinations afford the artist umpteen possibilities, generating each time new vivid images. Placed side by side, the cold or warm dots of colour replace the spontaneous brushstrokes, thus boosting the compositions'geometric entity. the laborious and austere process of pointillism serves the disorder and fluidity of thought, setting off, via the symbolic use of colour, the alternating conditions of human existence.

Hailing from the distant or recent past, the amorous feminine profiles, which haunt like persistent thoughts the pine-form symbols, tangle up schematically with the trees'dense foliage. Frail, tender figures ready to change form with the slightest blow of wind, they recall fleeting images of living, provoked by the mind's continuous recoiling to and fro in time.

One would think that Golfinopoulos reveals his innermost self, not only to balance and becalm his spirit, but also to come to a complete understanding and harmony with the outside world, thus creating reflections of the soul and universe.


Bia Papadopoulou

Art Historian



ARTIST OF TIME EXPERIENCED


Is it boredom or emotion that champions Andreas Golfinopoulos' latest ambiguous icons? One can equally enjoy both, given that one wishes to participate in the game of mnemonic transformation so ventured by the painter, between drawings of cypresses ane pines and objects of the body's amorous desires. His new pictorial material is metaphoric, and sequential to his previous unities: Retrospection (1989), Feminine Cloud (1993), White Cypress Tree (1994) and Visions and Images (1998). Suffice is that one focuses attention on the last verses of his poetic thought, which he had the courage to include in this catalogue: "Love of colours for painting / loves unforgettable and forgotten". The premise is as clear as memory's intensity. Elevation to memory, catharsis notwithstanding, contributes to transformation. Transformation embodies metaphor. It is not fortuitous that the artist's "pine forms" enhance the elevation to human form. Solitude boosts observation, and desire ambiguity. Golfinopoulos interprets in painterly terms what is playing on his mind. Ambiguity appears in the schematized vagueness of that which appears to be a distinct picture of reality. In art, as in life, despiction is not the only rule. As such, the trompe l'oeil effect in the artist's current paintings fall in with the bold conjunction of differentiated feeling and the tree's simple structural form. Each of these, a small piece of memory all together, comprise a place of duration, of associations and ideas. A familiar game, dating from Leonardo's time, when he incited his students to see new forms on the mouldy walls of ruins, thus enhancing their imagination. When psychoanalysis entered the domain of art thanks to the surrealists, Max Ernst transformed women into birds, Salvador Dali painted anthropomorphic towers, and Rene Magritte flying rocks on fire. With the surrealists, the stir of feelings excelled the appeasement thereof, and the transformation of matter-of-fact depiction. From then onwards, the trend of the creative arts, by giving priority to communication, gave rise to the current aesthetics of computer science, which undermined the role of transformation and set off the ascendancy of realistic depiction. The artist, from a priest of transformation turned into a scientist of depiction. However, Andreas Golfinopoulos continues in a romantic and chivalrous strain to combine images which he preserves in his mind with others which the retina retains. That he might cover the difference between objective observation and subjective depiction, the artist adopted the mnemonic schmatization. In pursuit he used it as a way for organizing knowledge upon the canvas, and for portraying the myth of human communication. A man of keen perception, having studied the shapes of nature and human feelings, he continues painting what is left of them, as though it concerns an artist of time experienced.


Dr. Yannis Kolokotronis

Assistant Professor of the History of Art
University of Thrace,
Dept. of Architecture and Civil Engineering



MORPHOGENESIS


Unsuspected themes,
Pines and cypresses,
Sketches that have kept me company for years.
Some clouds in the past,
Some trees in the present.
Tall cypress trees.
Tree-girls with long hair
Form shapes on the spot
And in the sky.
Talkative pine trees.
Women from the past
Wearing thick overcoats,
Coloured stoles,
And brooches on the lapel
With flat hats
Embellished with flowers and large feathers
They sing to the wind's blow.
Huge green sculptures,
Endless green lines.
Morphogenesis and pine-forms.
Trees
Made for companionship
Bouquets of beloved forms.
Loves of colours for paintings
Loves unforgettable and forgotten.


Andreas Golfinopoulos

20.8.05