HECTOR MAVRIDIS

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Bits and pieces between two songs

 

 It is morning, the artist enters his studio and closes the door behind him. He prepares his clay, he cleans up surfaces and puts on Fleetwood Mac's The Chain.

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Somewhere between this song - and every song that follows - Hector Mavridis once again takes up what has occupied his artistic work for decades: he explores and extends the limits of ceramics, the possibilities of materials, reshaping them; he penetrates and re-forms surfaces, modestly but fearlessly accepting the dynamic role of chance in the creative process.

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In his new solo exhibition at Lola Nikolaou Art Gallery, Mavridis shares with us new creative paths, with a set of works that complement  and highlight a long but also multi-dimensional creative process that deconstructs ceramics as we know it.

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Mavridis consistently challenges artistic certainties and stereotypes, stretching the endurance of materials, leaving behind the world of fired clay and finally managing to move with ease between various artistic and theoretical fields, between worlds that may be similar and apparently incompatible. To the question of whether he is a conceptual artist, a performer or a ceramist, the answer is clear and unequivocal: he is all of these.

And so, in this exhibition, Mavridis does not only present his works but, through them, his tireless and restless vision, his experiments with materials, forms and concepts.

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We see sculptures, but we also see their "casts", countless versions of their substance, which initiate new conceptual dialogues; photographs of work-in-progress, glazed clods; wall-painting compositions on ceramic paper, which are transformed by processes and practices of ceramics rather than painting; and they  burn, rust, change appearance and texture more or less controlled - but certainly with complete freedom..

All these multidimensional sculptural and creative visions of Mavridis ultimately succeed in being, essentially, works of art which are always open to new interpretations. They manage to negate, to "break the chain" of what we think we know or are familiar with  - somewhere between songs and certainties, inventions and experiences.

Areti Leopoulou-Art Historian