2nd Part of the Exhibition of works by Nikos Kessanlis as a tribute to the 10 +1 years since his death, under the title “Friends”.

The opening of the exhibition is on the 22nd of May. The second part of the tribute includes the series “Friends” or in other words “Shadows”.

The philosophy of the operational gesture led Kessanlis to Mec-Art and to the reconstruction of the image through photomechanical means. The first Phantasmagorias took on the form of Chinese shadows on paper or crumpled up sheets.

His elaborate method is a combination of shadow theater and variable viewpoints. The human figures, lit by spotlights, pose behind a transparent fabric; their posture, gestures and forms as imprinted on this screen are photographed by the artist who manipulates the light¬ing to achieve an infinite range of shading, superimposing and altering of the outlines. The re¬sulting image is then enlarged and reproduced on sensitized fabric.

The intervention of Nikos is double: he manipulates the structure of the image by changing the in¬tensity of lighting; and he chooses to capture one or the other instant.

The Phantasmagorias is not a result of some trick -it is the simple account of a gestural, plastic situation. There are secondary references, of course: our mind goes (and the mind of Nikos did before our own) to the Chinese shadow theatre, to fairy tales with magic lamps or to Karagiozi, the popular Greek shadow the¬atre...to all those figments of the imagination, those luminous figures rising through darkness -in other words, to those disconcerting incarnations of mystery for which the West has always envied the East.