Dimitris Xonoglou’s ten year production in the field of neo-representational art was distinguished not only by his tendency to use shattered, transcendental, almost distorted forms, but also by his desire to create a fantastic, dream-like or even nightmarish atmosphere. He himself talked about “stimulations arising from contemporary reality”, archetypes, creatures of his imagination, and about his profound need to interpret the world around him in his own personal way. Up to now traditional artistic means were his basic expressive tool, where line and color are used with extreme intensity in highly original and imaginative combinations. His aim was the “representation” of human activity outside any historical, religious or social context, through an esoteric monologue.<\/p>\n
From 1985 Xonoglou becomes concerned with issues that betray a new attitude toward the role of the object, the meaning of the materials and the importance of construction. The use of a natural element, fire, becomes now the main feature of his work: with fire he burns infinite pages of books and other printed material. Weird forms suddenly appear; strange figures and motifs, usually in geometrical order, emerge from ochre, brownish, black and yellow shades of color. In both his easel and his space works the painter creates “constructions” of aesthetic forms, following a process whereby the object is transformed by his own intervention, and often by the spectator’s. At times, the spectator might feel perplexed when first confronted by these visual impressions and their unexpected tangible relations. The works of this cycle seem the artistic implementations of ideas and concepts, as well as the outcome of a desire to break new ground in Artistic expressivity. Xonoglou seems to have entered into the wider realm of the Art of the Object, ascribing new meanings to materials, to space and to the means of construction of a work of art.<\/p>\n
Xonoglou puts these compositions under the general title “Logos”, declaring, thus, their correlation with cosmological and religious beliefs. But one can understand these works mainly by the way he uses his materials and the way they are affected by the intervention of other elements: of fire; of books, with their multiple and eternal meanings; of wax with its biological origin; of ash, a compound of inorganic substances; of flour, which is a primary factor of life and a potential plastic material.<\/p>\n
Fire is for the artist a natural element possessing magical qualities, perhaps a reference to the experiences and events of his personal life. His materials are symbols of a world involved in a process of destruction and rebirth, a process of change and recreation: descriptions of the cycle of life and death.<\/p>\n
Miltiadis Papanikolaou<\/strong><\/p>\n Professor of History of Art<\/strong><\/p>\n School of Philosophy<\/strong> Dimitris Xonoglou’s ten year production in the field of neo-representational art was distinguished not only by his tendency to use shattered, transcendental, almost distorted forms, but also by his desire…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,326],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-331","category-reviews","tag-miltiadis-papanikolaou"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nAristotle University of Thessaloniki<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"