Dimitris Xonoglou’s painting
Both interpreters of dreams and psychoanalysts should be interested in the entirely personal mythology with which Dimitri Xonoglou started out. I have personally been interested in his work since his first solo exhibition in 1982 which was remarkable both for the skill in drawing he showed and for the vivid colors of the fantastic landscapes in which his visions unfolded, reminiscent in their conception of certain landscapes of Kandinsky. As for his figures, those of one particular period -tortoises, birds, flying donkeys balancing on the branches of trees, slices of watermelon and other unexpected objects all balanced on over-sized male heads – all these remind one of the flying figures of Chagall. But whereas Chagall’s figures refer to particular Russian-Jewish stories, Xonoglou’s are entirely personal. So with Chagall and with Kandinsky I see Xonoglou has points of contact. I do not at all imply that he knows them, has studied them, or has copied them. His vision is self-sufficient, personal. There is perhaps some artistic relationship between them, however, a Slavic vein running through his work and theirs.
From 1986 Xonoglou’s internal landscape seems to change. He approaches the problem of expression through painting in a more Mediterranean way – emotional, expressionistic elements are reduced and elements of a more intellectual process are introduced, just as innate and primal as the first. And the “innate” should be emphasized. Because it should not be forgotten that Xonoglou is an artist with a rich education, well informed of all the developments of modern art. His studies in painting and ceramics in Rome may have left their imprint. But however much he may have absorbed the lessons of post-Picasso and post-Dadaist art he remains an artist who follows his own personal inspiration.
Today, then, he appears less emotional, more intellectual. He still expresses himself using conventional means -although all his materials do not belong to orthodox painting. But now his creative process uses the object the half-burnt book, the torn page – not so much in the spirit of Duchamp as in that of Beuys: of the wearing out of materials. The object is also used as a source of color; and a “geometric” tendency makes him organize the books in upright rows like make-shift bookshelves, or horizontally in “roads”, as he puts it, framing a jet-black surface of charred black pages, or a surface covered with a layer of pure white flour. Other paintings again are made up of half burnt pages streaked with “spills” of clear wax, and blotched with black stains. He uses wax not just for its color , but for the smell which the work leaves behind it like another dimension.
Flour, wax, burnt books, all are redolent of the country environment of Xonoglou’s youth. One neighbor milled flour. Another provided honey and beeswax. His grandmother burnt the old ledgers from his father’s business which piled up in their house in the village. The village was called Kioupkioi, the village of pottery (now Proti) near Serres, and there he was later to see his entire house burnt down. The whole district has indeed seen many fires, pillagings and catastrophes. From his studies in ceramics in Rome he has retained a fascination with fire: fire which solidifies form, which bakes clay, or bread made of flour, kneeded like clay: fire which also dissolves forms, burns books, melts wax.
A life of experiences, memories, events, assimilated by a sensitive recipient, is thus expressed and transformed in compositions which a third person can approach: images, visions, signs from his innermost being. In this way he makes ours the world where foods of the mind (books) are no less subject to wear than material foods (flour). All can be burnt and dissolved.
After the fire the charred embers are composed by Xonoglou into constructed works which invite us to meditate on the wearing out of materials and the vulnerability of knowledge at the mercy of the first FLAME to come along.
February 7, 1990
Alexandros Xidis