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| APOSTOLOS KILESSOPOULOS |
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The Variations on the Archetypal Theme of Apostolos Kilessopoulos "Nothing in
the universe can be the same, if somewhere we do Scholars concerned with Apostolos Kilessopoulos' work have so far appositely remarked his gradual transition from representational to abstract with a cosmic subject-matter. In this context one can notice how he reverts to the original idea, to the Archetypal -according to the painter- Theme, after a few interludes, due to which the change in colour function from work to work is accomplished. Each colour is presented initially as a special and autonomous entity so as to become gradually part of a broader group. In his cosmic landscapes' the background colour is converted to share the leading role with the allocated luminous smears, while the composition is spaced out in such a way that you finally have the feeling that you climb from one level to another, that the moment you are left dangling in the illimitable void, there you find the illuminated point to hold on. Despite the vigour of the forms and the colour lights', the equipoise is kept in his paintings so as to commensurate to the one dominating in universe for reasons of its self-preservation and prolongation. In 1961 Miro wrote for his triptych devoted to "Blue": "I have taken a very long time to produce it. Not to paint it, but to think it out." In this state of concentration Kilessopoulos develops the whole process of his painting; from the first brushstrokes of the grounding till the forms-ideograms. Without downgrading the role of drawing, he discovers in the sound vibrations of colours a source of expression with a mystical enchantment that offers him unlimited possibilities to propose his personal contemplation of 'cosmos', full of allusions. In his variations the continuity of forms comes first, while the function of each of them separately follows. Space is not anymore the place where they have settled or leave their sign, but itself the ruling presence. The elements that either confine on the painted surface or stretch beyond it, in combination with the alternating chromatic scale, weave the imaginary web of his artworks around the Archetypal Theme, the everlasting pursuit around the crucial verb 'to be'. Kilessopoulos' muse and constant consolation in this course is music that composes the 'grammar' and 'syntax' of his painting. Imbued with sounds, he seeks for the 'image' in the invisible and the 'infinite'. Although he is fond of silence, in his life and writings he declares that he wants to be accompanied by music at all times, to create in other artistic fields inspired by 'her' and to devote to 'her' his 'visual' melody, lending credit thus to Vassily Kandinsky's remarks on the exceptional way the two arts are bound. Furthermore, he aims to explore the music area that comprises of anything conscious, subconscious or metaphysical, but not in the position of a musician. He remains a genuine lover of music and to 'her' he wishes to offer something that would appertain to 'her' nature. At the same time he attempts to create into his images an 'environment' accessible to vision, so that music can come into his sight as another Diotima. Kilessopoulos offers the viewer the opportunity to see more than he has depicted. Not only vision is activated in front of his artworks, but -in a chain reaction- our other senses as well, as we are invited to listen to the sound vibrations of colours, to feel the variant ways of applying the chromatic substance and generally the materials on canvas. "Those who have eyes hear and those who have ears will see", says the poet Nanos Valaoritis and Kilessopolulos sets the words into action by calling us -as an action of 'synaesthesia'- to realize with the help of colours in the first place the sounds they communicate (audition colorée) and finally to search for the archetypal idea that contains the most intimate essence of our existence. In his pursuit of the depth andheight of the 'cosmic' Infinite that can hold no frame or name and thus is often left to brim over canvas, he combines painting with music as well as film making with architecture and astrophysics. Whatever occupies his mind stays well hidden below the surface. Blue is the basic colour in, on and through which all his pursuits, worries, thoughts and feelings take form. "The inclination of blue towards depth is so great that it becomes more intense the darker the tone, and has a more characteristic inner appeal. The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural... Blue is the colour of heaven, the way we visualize it at the sound of the word 'heaven'", wrote Kandinsky in On the Spiritual in Art (1911-1912). Yves Klein, who recognized in blue the ability to make the invisible visible, was led to sign one day imaginatively on the far side of the sky and from that day onwards to hate the birds that flew back and forth punching holes in 'his' most beautiful and greatest work. With this symbolic gesture he had prescribed his next step, the constant pursue of the unlimited supernatural values of blue, and through it of the infinite and of eternity. Kilessopoulos makes a step further; he dares to lay the birds, the stars and the galaxies by activating with their colourful presence his 'skies' that are no more only blue. He talks of the sky and he stares at it with awe. The adjective he chooses to accompany the noun is 'bright' and all the more so in plural -"bright skies". It is not accidental that he does not refer to 'the sky' not even orally, but to 'the skies', foreseeing with the sensitive eye of the artist-philosopher the polymorphism of the universe. This is what he attempts to render through colour explosions, and therefore he summons up every knowledge and intuition of the cosmic universe, every artistic capability as well as his musical experience to 'see' further. "Whatever we hold tight in our palms, he says, is nothing compared to those things that slip through our fingers". When he was young he dared to provoke Death, while later on in his paintings he juxtaposes him with catalytic simplicity on the same canvas against the powerful tones of birth and life, composing thus his personal cosmogony. Actually, every moment rendered in his artworks has a dual nature; it is at the same time happiness and grief, birth and death, an opening and a closure, a positive and a negative, yin and yang. Painting and Colour remain in the core of every such image, which opens a dialogue with both elements -the part with the whole-, raising each time a new question that is unknown, if it can be answered. Kilessopoulos could
be considered a surrealist, but he is not, as he does
not create images of his fantasy or subconscious. He is a "great metaphysicist" of
our times, who senses what is happening above the directly visible by using
human memory and the immanent cosmic knowledge. Looking at us all "from
the height of a firefly/ or from the height of a pine tree/ drawing his
breath deeply in the dew of the stars/ or in the dust of the earth",
like Seferis says in Les anges sont blancs [1939], he creates a 'world'
that is surrounded
by "naked women with bronze leaves from a Barbary fig tree/ extinguished
lamp-posts airing stained bandages of the great city/ ungainly bodies
producing Centaurs and Amazons/ when their hair touched the Milky Way." Dr
Martha loannidou |
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