Nikos Kessanlis

Nikos Kessanlis was one of the artists that broke away from the aestheticism of 'Greekness' which in the post-World War II era reproduced the work of the Thirties Generation - a movement that was heavily influenced by the work of Yannis Tsarouchis. He was one of the protagonists of Mec-art, a movement of contemporary realism of the 1960s. (Mec-art applied to works produced by transferring photographic images to canvas treated with photosensitive emulsion where quite often the original image was modified or restructured, creating a new, synthetic one).

In Kensanlis' work this was achieved by creating images of shadows that depicted his friends.

The Phantasmagories of Identity, was created between 1963 and 1965 (image taken from here )

Photographs of his friends were projected onto a white textile treated with photosensitive emulsion which were then sketched and photographed.

 

 (image taken from here )

 

 

 

 

Queue, installed in the Omonia station of the Athens metro

 

 



This work is long, so I have photographed it in stages

 

 

 

looking closer 

 

 

 

 

 



 

portrait of Nikos Hakjikyriakos-Ghikas which you can see here

 

 

 

 

 



 

I have been a fan of Kessanlis' art for a long time, as I find the 'shadow' images very evocative and haunting.  The exhibition we went to see two weeks ago, at a. antonopoulou. art, was totally different however.

Titled 'The Walls of the City', it is just that. City walls - the paintings in this exhibition are about paint, brushstroke and texture.

 

 

 

 

 

looking closer - the texture has been built layer upon layer, sometimes using newspapers to achieve the texture, but I could not tell what the other materials were