SHORT TALKS ON PAINTINGS

Your Success Will Astonish Everyone

Everything takes place on the surface of the canvas: the horse’s gaze, the candlelight, the gleam of metals, the folds of fabric with their thematic revelations, the sculptural quality of objects’ surfaces. All of these are aesthetic qualities that emerge through the sculpting of paint.

The act of painting captures, on a flat surface, the moisture of the eye, the texture of fabrics, the skin of animals and plants, and every distinct material quality through chromatic nuances and the luminosity of reflections.

Often, the realistic rendering of elements within the narrative conflicts with the cancellation of illusion produced by the flat, almost monochromatic background. This is an apparent contradiction that primarily concerns questions of interpretation, as well as the questioning of truth within the image, where metaphor, allegory, and a multitude of associations play a fundamental role. Moreover, the artist’s intentions and the disposition of their gaze are conveyed through painting, giving rise to subtle suggestions.

It would not be unreasonable to suggest that, despite the recognisable narrative elements and the visual richness offered by a wealth of recollections—as quotations or fragments from well-known and iconic works in art history are incorporated into the composition—the viewer ultimately finds themselves confronted with the silence of the canvas.

Nevertheless, a critical approach to the history of images undoubtedly reveals how our relationship with beauty and truth changes in the contemporary era, within a framework that encompasses both the reading of images from the past and the ways in which their enchantment is dispelled today.

In any case, certain enduring questions concerning the artistic process always relate to the limits of the painted surface within its two-dimensional nature, to virtuosity and the play of optical illusion, as well as to thematic ambiguities.

Vasilis Zografos succeeds in bringing all these elements together, creating a form of thoroughly conceptual painting, in which each work constitutes an act of reflection on the very limits of the concept of representation.

In his book Camera Lucida (La Chambre claire, 1980), Roland Barthes introduces the concept of punctum to describe the profound, personal, and subjective relationship that a viewer develops with a photograph. It is that element the viewer does not actively seek, yet which captures their attention, takes them by surprise, and holds their gaze. Extending the concept of punctum to the painted image, we might describe it as that something which moves the viewer emotionally rather than rationally: a detail—texture, brushstroke, luminosity, an unexpected angle, or an apparent imperfection—that can hold them spellbound on a personal, unconscious level. It may also be an element that draws the viewer into an unexpected narrative, capable of generating emotional intensity and entirely transforming an established interpretation of the work, beyond the painter’s original intention.

It is worth allowing the horse’s gaze to awaken our own way of seeing, so that we may then appreciate the ambiguity of painting and the visual tactility^* in Zografos’s works. And, as the exhibition’s title, Your Success Will Astonish Everyone, ironically suggests, this too is an achievement—a feat capable of astonishing anyone.

Thaleia Stefanidou
Art Historian / Critic – Curator

*Visual tactility transforms the painted surface from a field of representation into a field of sensory experience. The gaze is no longer confined to recognising forms but wanders across the material, seeking texture, resistance, density, and traces of gesture. Painting thus becomes a space where vision meets touch and the image acquires the physical presence of an object.