2015-M.-KOMPATSIARI-BEHIND THE MATTER

 

BEHIND THE MATTER

Just one more moment, Sir Time. One more moment, because I have never been so young, because I’m still learning, because I have so much more energy, so much more faith than I ever had before. Because there are so many duchesses, so many girls, so many priests, so many thieves and soldiers, so many witches and monsters, so many bulls. One moment more, 82 is not an age at which to die, especially when the man is Goya.

Francisco de Goya

 

My inner world has been defined by art. What lies within the boundaries of my creative being is an act of reflection and physical labor. It is dialog with the Other in search of the community of feelings. An exploration of self. And it is precisely this creative act that reveals the manifold facets of my Self, as it shatters intellectual resistance and breaks down the barriers within which it is confined, and in doing so, proffers the gift of self-awareness. It is a journey of individuation, wild and dark, that slowly begins to shine and reveal the shape of that which is essential. And it is the repetition of this same arduous process that enables me to reach the core of that which lies within me. 

The visual object arises from a protean dialogue between matter and the creative act. And it is this formative dialogue of the material with the gathering momentum of hands driven by the power of the psyche that opens up a channel to forces, to the body, to scent, vision and touch, all coming together to form an amalgam laden with unexplored secrets, hidden harmonies, and magical engravings. 

A formidable battle is waged within the time and space of my inner self to retrieve the inherent expression of the essential, which rips silence apart to speak in fragments of Reason. A visual incident, given shape by the leaven of my innermost self. A humble arrival at the heart of matter. It is not the yearning to dominate matter that guides the journey to “the act of making” but a “reciprocal” gift of reassessment and commemoration. It is art that reinvents the value of freedom in the place within me, this land of the unexplored inner self that shares borders with inquiry, script, texture and the behavior of matter.

 

Maria Kompatsiari

Thessaloniki, 2015