2007 NEPHELOCOCCYGIA

NEPHELOCOCCYGIA

M.Kompatsiari JUNE 2007

The works presented under the general title “Nephelococcygia” are a continuation of the unit entitled “Tracing the Ineffable”

Here, “Nephelococcygia” marks the ideal, potential completion, a utopian peak the touch of which has nothing to offer to the artist but a sonorous end, in contrast to that process which engenders emotion, knowledge and creativity. During this process, one “communes” with self-awareness and receives knowledge. Therefore, Nephelococcygia is my lighthouse, safeguarding my course.

Painting is a need, it is an expression – it is the necessity of expression. Through painting, I begin and maintain a constant dialogue with what lies within and without, with what is unknown and what is known, with yesterday and today, with the impossible and the possible, with dream and reality. I record the hologram of my personal psychoanalysis – involuntarily, of course, but also inevitably. By making discoveries through painting, I discover myself; by comprehending, I comprehend myself.

My works are based on my obsessions: obsessions of love, hate, pain, joy. They turn into small screams. I take these various obsessions, drag them out, isolate them, face them, shape them, tame them, charm them, turn them self-luminous, turn them visible. They are insignificant memories, ravels of past or present images and events that function within the work as the main self-enforcing motif.

I feel that the topic selects the form, the levels and the colours of the work. I simply select the Word. I use letters and symbols from modern as well as dead languages (Cuneiform, Linear B, Cypriot, Phoenician, Egyptian, Chinese, even the language of the Incas from the Andes) in a dance of harmonic juxtaposition with intense visual gestures that from endless, uneven feline lines. I seek endless motion in the two dimensions of the canvas, so that entropy is led towards enthalpy, to the harmony of an imaginary circle, like a uroborus snake. Everything moves within light, goes towards light, is light. It is my personal need that every experience, negative or positive, should tend towards the light, towards hope for continuation, for creation.

In my work, I often “scribe” lullabies, whispers, spells and charms, like on a ship on its maiden voyage. Unintelligible writing preserves the charge of giving, the rhythm of speech and participates in the overall rhythm of the work. It dominates the composition and gives whatever each of us is worthy to take.