I have known Vassilis Karakatsanis since he was young and so I had the pleasure to follow him through his journey into the world of art from 1980 until nowadays.
As the Cultural Attaché at the Spanish Embassy in Athens and Director of the Queen Sofia Cultural Foundation I had the opportunity to meet most of the artists of the contemporary Greek figurative art. Amongst the young ones, of his same age, I could recognize Vassilis Karakatsanis special talent, characterized by a ‘dynamic’ figurative search.
The scholarship from the Spanish government to continue his studies in Barcelona, I think, widened his artistic horizons, his fantasies and inputs. He managed to obtain, since an early age, a complete, mature and particularly sensitive artistic formation.
In his first works he applies his first notions learnt during his artistic training which lean towards the composition criteria of Cubism and the chromatic choices of Fauvism.
He shapes his personal language evolutively through the use of the mixed technique and gradually he starts to incorporate the three-dimensional object on the pictorial surface. From 1985 onwards he has portrayed mainly thematic units which he derives from his personal experiences and the observation of the familiar world around him.
Whole sets of clothes are incorporated in his paintings and combined with aggressive colors, so that in the final result some specific illusions with a clear figurative content emerge. It’s obvious that Vassilis Karakatsanis is not stimulated by neorealism or pop, and it’s also clear that he has a personal relationship with this material (fabrics, clothes, etc).
He often arranges his compositions according to a theatrical concept and raises the everyday object to structural element of his work. He uses the rich chromatic scale recreating entire elements of his real surrounding into figurative work and investigating with sensitivity the limits between reality and illusion. Since 2000 with the series “Platia Vathis”(Vathis Square) he has simplified his ‘means of figurative processes’ where, skillfully, Vassilis Karakatsanis avoids the easy sliding towards a figurative sub- literature with melodramatic elements or which an evident accent of a social critic. The writing is abstract enough, mature, but also ‘eccentric’ whenever necessary. With the participation of an emotional man, but also with the detachment of a distant observer, Vassilis Karakatsanis discovers the hidden folds of this degraded zone, involving the spectator in an attentive vision.
The power of art goes beyond the possible limits prosaic reality, transforming these vile and decadent places into magic and special scenery. I am pleased that his last works are present at this exhibition.