Space captured brilliantly in black and white

MILKA Panayotova  showed some beautiful Scape Views on paper at Studio Gallery, 65 Pericleous Street, Nicosia
‘Scape Views’  puts together a number of recent works that explore landscapes and spaces, both imaginary and real.
Any space acquires its character only when man leaves a sign on it and so it becomes a place, one that we know, one that we dare explore and use.
But do our cities embody such a place? How much of our surroundings are we really able to perceive? Maybe the parameters of contemporary city life don’t give us the chance to really look at what is around us.
Or maybe there is too much to look at? Our surroundings change every day and so does our perception of space.
The show examined this complex man-space relationship with simple and graphic lines, which build up new architectures and yet places we may be familiar with.
The black-and-white signs on paper walk across the gallery, thus creating a new place, which the spectator my simply use for reflection.
Milka Panayotova completed her degree in Fine Arts in Florence last year.
She has participated in many group exhibitions in Italy and has collaborated in various events in the field of theatre and performance.
Her range of work extends from painting and etching to video, performance and dance/theatre. She currently lives and works in Cyprus
Milka was born in Bulgaria and came here at the age of 13.
She did private lessons in various places in Nicosia although she had already started taking Art lessons in Sofia.
After finishing high school in 2001, she went to Florence, Italy, where she graduated from the Accademia di belle Arti di Firenze last year. At the moment she lives and works here but still hasn’t got her own studio.
 
 

Masala
MASALA is  an exhibition by three Cypriot-based artists, whose work has been profoundly influenced by experiences in India; Lazaro Hadjisoteriou, Mary-Lynne Stadler and Raymond Wilson.
 The exhibition is at the Melina Mercouri Centre,  next to Famagusta Gate, Nicosia.
It will be open on Thursday, June 7 from 12 noon -10pm and on Friday June 8 from 10am-8pm.
‘Masala’ is a group exhibition of work influenced by travel in India of three artists who recently came together and discovered that country to be a common source of inspiration
They all come from very different backgrounds and happened to meet in Cyprus!
While each approaches the subject from a completely individual viewpoint, all successfully convey something of the essence of their experiences in India, whether through colours, subject matter or choice of medium.
Lazaro Hadjisoteriou
As a child, Lazaro went to the UK after 1974, where she studied art and design.
Her love for Cyprus eventually brought her back to the island where she continued to work in the art and design field for several years.
Her travels to the Western and Eastern world, the wonderful people she had met, and her intense experiences along the way, have had a profound influence on her work. The bright and vibrant colours of her paintings reflect the life and spirit of India.
"India, for me, is a great abstract painting. Logic and mind do not enter but only the heart speaks".
Mary-Lynne Stadler
Mary-Lynne is a professional painter/print-making artist living and working in Cyprus since 2003, and making work inspired by the atmosphere of the places and situations that she finds herself in.
 Early in 2006, she travelled to Cochin in Kerala, India, where she encountered the dignified grace of a local woman carrying out her simple daily chores.
The recent series of paintings are a celebration of the woman’s sense of place, dance and belongings that the artist experienced in watching these humble activities, while Mary-Lynne’s lithographs, inspired by the dominating presence of washing rock in every backyard, convey a real sense of silence and mindfulness, qualities that she sensed were palpably present in all of Rosalie’s (the Indian neighbour) activities .
Raymond Wilson
Raymond is a multi-media artist working with found objects and unconventional materials in an intuitive way.
He depicts the human figure in its psychological environment with strong delineation and pure colour, transforming discarded objects into haunting plaintive figures.
Since graduating from Gray’s School of Art in Scotland in 1996, he has undertaken residencies and exhibitions in Cyprus, Egypt, and Scotland. Raymond’s life and work have been strongly influenced by his experiences across the Indian subcontinent.
His colours reflect the vibrancy of India, and the fragility and diversity in the celebration of human life.

Christos Kalfas at Gloria’s Gallery.
SUCH an array of superb surrealist paintings.
Walking into Gloria’s was like entering a dream. These dreams were superbly under aesthetic control, however, each one with a different and a new message. 
Painted with sensitive understanding and knowledge, the chosen forms are always balanced superbly on the canvas.
The placing was exceptional. I think the Greek word is "topothetisi."
The emotional ‘disturbance’ is in the artist’s vision and he conquers the aesthetics, as well. 
The images can spiral off into rare and complicated fantasies while the subtle order of the forms keeps ‘hold’ of the canvases.
In other words, a great and satisfying exhibition seen as a whole but at the same time each individual painting superbly covetable as well as individual works of art.
 

 Varnavas Varnava, at Kypriaki Gonia
VARNAVAS was born in Kythrea and studied at the Thessaloniki School of Fine Arts, Greece.
He has participated in many group exhibitions but his Kypriaki Gonia exhibition in Larnaca is his first one-man show.
Art critic Kyriakos Katzourakis comments on Varnava’s paintings:
"Varnavas’s talent and inner wealth is almost immediately understood when someone first sees his painting. It is a kind of painting full of colour and simplicity, free of ostentation and self projection.
"It sounds self-evident, and perhaps it is somewhere deep inside, but nowadays when the artist is swamped with information, with a variety of images found everywhere, with the excessive image of reality as it is shown through the media, it is not self-evident that one uses the austere means of painting to express complex issues.
"A characteristic of the images that Varnavas puts on the surface is the chromatic scale which seems to defy the mainstream applications. He sometimes matches dissimilar aspects with the inner necessity of colours and not their aesthetics."
Until June 15.
                  

Venice Biennale
KIKOS Lanitis is one of the artists in Faccia Lei -  Portraits in Transition - in between media and cultural areas of contemporary art.
It will be hosted in Venice in the spaces of Spazio Thetis, a company dedicated to environmental research, located in Arsenale Novissimo.
The opening will be on Wednesday, June 6 and is a project from Museum Arterra from Austria.
The curator is Elena Agudio.
The Cyprus Pavilion will open to the public from June 10 -November 21 and is at the Palazzo Malipiero.
Entitled  "Old Earth, No More Lies I’ve Seen You," it is curated by Denise Robinson.
Haris Epaminonda and Mustafa Hulusi are representing Cyprus.
More information next week.
The opening reception will be at  6pm on Thursday, June 7.
 
Maria Spyrou
MARIA Spyrou’s exhibition at Technis gallery is entitled ‘Colourful Journey’ and continues until June 9.

On the ropes
CHRISTA Loucaidou Efstathiou has an exhibition that will open on Saturday at Zavos Coco de Mer (old Rousos Hotel), Yermasoyia, Limassol, which will continue until June 12.
It is titled ‘Ropes’ and is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s  sketches of a concept for a rope-making machine.
Like many of his other ideas, it never got built.
She says: "I focused on different ways where a rope could be used. I mainly focused on old fishing boats and ropes, however the use of ropes is unlimited, so is my work…"