ARTS PAGE             Glyn Hughes    

Glafkos Koumides at Argo 

Here is a superb exhibition at Argo Gallery by a Cypriot artist – now living in Germany – who is equally at home with conceptual art or painting.
His present exhibition is mostly of paintings and they are often of landscapes or seascapes with suggestions of a lonely Surrealisim.
What appears to be a piano floats in a silent estuary. Images from past 20th century masterpieces hover in respect to our current emptiness. It’s as if Cubism has lost its roots and starts searching for another course. A landscape full of trees is silent. No wind is blowing. The trees do not speak to each other.
These great paintings reek of a great loss. The very land we stand on is shifting away.

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Lazaris Argyrou at Kypriaki Gonia 

“Light and Colour from Cyprus” is the title of this exhibition of watercolours and mosaics at Kypriaki Gonia in Larnaca, which continues  until 30 November.
Lazaris Argyrou was born in 1938 in the village of Agrokipia in the district of Nicosia and is the eldest son of a rural family of nine children. As soon as he finished his primary education he began his struggles for a living, working at his parents’ farm and later as a mason. At various times of his life he worked as a miner in the ore mines of Mitsero and Agrokipia.
He started drawing and painting at an early age. He would gather coloured ore rocks from the mine area or small chunks of house plaster to use them as materials to draw or paint on the cobblestones of a threshing floor or on the flat surfaces or rocks abounding in the riverbed of Serrahis.
He bought his first watercolour paints and paper in 1960. Between 1962 and 1964 he followed the Athens ABC correspondence art course. Since 1968 he has been actively involved in sculpture and as from 1995 he regularly attends a studio in Nicosia and draws the nude. Recently, since 2000 he has been actively involved in mosaic work.
Hambis the engraver comments:
" In the 1960s, we worked side by side at various construction sites in Nicosia,  he as a builder and me a worker. At the time , Lazaris Argyrou was taking his first steps. He walked, however, down familiar paths. He painted the world he both knew and loved. He praised through his art the tormented miners, the workers and the farmers, as well as the natural beauty of our very own Cyprus. His purity and solemnity, combined with his outpouring talent, accompanied him, and he expressed, simply and honestly, the truth that surrounds him."
Costas Graecos the journalist and author comments further:
" Our outstanding and stylistically unique artist Lazaris Argyrou is one of the finest watercolour masters of our country. He has achieved great progress in this genre and has reached very high levels of artistic completeness. Above and beyond the correct layout of the design and the harmonious realisation of the composition, what distinguishes his work, as before, is his palette, clearly Cypriot and bright, which expresses the very characteristics of the Cypriot sun.
Following along in this direction, Lazaris’ work with light and colour over the years has led him to high levels of depiction, and, today, in his new works, his colours have reached such a sense of idealisation that they themselves are transubstantiated into light, into a blinding and harmonious sense of colour, clearly local and our own, one which differs greatly from the dull colours we encounter in other lands, and one which constitutes a hymn to optimism and to our faith in life".

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Snapshots

Andreas Makariou is showing at Apocalypse Gallery and we’ll all be there tonight (at 7 pm) to see what our most dynamic artist has in store. This time he has taken a pigmental swipe at the gruesome Wake Up Call, and we’ll be given a canvasy load of  sighs, thighs, wigs and bras but not the soft focusing, thank heavens. Makariou is a social critic with a brush in his hand and – possibly -  a smile on his face. 
And such a powerful expression too. He uses paint with the delicacy of a trowel. The result can be, to be exact, quite alarming. Excellent. Just what we need.

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Close distance

Castelliotissa was fully packed last week.  Dedicated artists  of Open Studios closed their doors earlier  and dashed to a darkened room full of conceptual intriguaries by Horst Weierstall. Videos, too demonstrating  the complexities of our city these days.
Later there was a play by the "Lost  Spirit Theatre Group’  directed by the Iranian theatre director Hooman Shabahang (winner of 1st prize at the 9th International Theatre Festival at Lorrach, Germany 2005).
This was written by Mashhoud Mohsenian and designed by Hooman. The solo performer was Narges Abdi.   A Goethe-Zentrum, Nicosia  event.

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Open Studios             
Within the Walls of Nicosia.

Something went wrong this year. Blame the weather and perhaps the fact that so many artists who have their studios inside the walls of Nicosia seem to be living (or working - in other jobs ) - out.
Perhaps next year it should only be for three or four  days and artists requested to stay amongst their work both mornings and afternoons. These are certainly not part-time artists or Sunday painters. Many are the best we have. And the work can be superb.
It’s still the most positive event of the year. An essential  occasion.
Remember the group of artists, Greek and Turkish and others have taken their own initiative.  Artists are bridge makers.
The catalogue of Open Studios states:
"The only Visual Arts Festival  which unites and rejuvenates the historical centre of Nicosia is being organised for the third time within its walls, having gained the interest of the public the recognition and support of the state.”
With the map of the whole of Nicosia as their trademark they lay down their vision.

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Dr Vassos Lyssarides at Famagusta Gate

It’s the colour that does it. The fact that Dr Lyssarides, a much-travelled man who surely gets his visual (painting) information from here and not his travels  suggests that all of our painters would  be better staying at home.
 For learning how to paint. In colour that is. Not black and white filled with a blush.  The island IS colour and so many  of our artists who travel to study art often throw off their birthright. Once they are into various ‘isms’ (others’ isms) they get trapped in pigmental neatnesses which, of course, is not colour but an apology for filling in the canvases.
There are, of course, our famous painters who have travelled to study, BUT the good ones were strong on colour before they left; especially the first and some of the second generation: Savva,  for example who never lost out on the Messaoria. He took it to France with him, I suppose and kept it all his life. Upstaging the French. 
Vassos Lyssarides is a born  colourist and has retained his birthright. This is because he had it, to start with. The two long rooms at Famagusta Gate are a joy. This is pure painting from the roots of the environment. Colour culled from our landscape. Colour from flowers. Colour from everyday things caught in the light of this country. And, of course, his colour speaks to us, and speaks to the world for us too.

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 Mixed at En Plo                         

Following on from their very successful ‘SIMPLY CYPRUS’ exhibition in April this year, Print Art Consultancy in association with Curium Gallery, Limassol have organised another exhibition at the En Plo, in Paphos harbour.
Having an ‘open theme’ it will feature over 20 artists and 100 paintings. As with their previous exhibitions, the organisers have managed to bring together both well known established painters along side some talented up and coming artists.
The result is a pleasing mix of subjects, styles and medium appealing to all tastes.
One of the established artists, Mandy Bunn from Paphos, a professionally trained artist who has built a reputation for fine watercolour pet portraits has produced some different work for the exhibition including a dancer tying ballet shoe ribbons, whilst Jane Jukes remains true to her popular nautical themes.
There is also a large range of limited edition fine art prints reproduced from a selection of the artists’ work. The exhibition runs from 19th November through until 27th November
For further information or details on how to exhibit in the future please call either Print Art Consultancy on 25580726 or Curium Gallery on 25342501.

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