‘Bright Days,’ a solo exhibition of recent works by Cypriot artist Christos Avraam, is now on display in the rotunda of Anassa. The exhibition, which includes nine paintings and one group of sculptures, plays with the idea of landscape. Avraam does not paint from life, but rather develops a scene by applying elements such as oil, acrylic, pastel, and charcoal—he calls them his ‘personal vocabulary’—to canvas, creating layers of textures, pigments, and gestural lines that he scrapes and reworks. The layered approach develops a sculptural, three-dimensional quality to the paintings; the inclusion of materials such as embroidery and aluminium screen gives even more depth to them. The works are largely expressionistic, with broad brushstrokes in lines the artist calls ‘pure but colourful’ creating a sense of dynamism on each canvas, but at the same time a sense of perspective emerges, inviting the viewer to create a landscape in one’s own mind. Similarly, figures, such as a human profile, provoke the viewer to imagine a story suffused with human emotion taking place there. ‘I want to evoke the quality of movies or of the memories left after a lucid dream,’ Avraam says. Although each work has a true perspective, he rotates the canvas onto each side as he paints to create a sense of balance and harmony. Avraam is a graduate of the Athens National School of Fine Arts, Greece, and has exhibited in Greece, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Germany (in Berlin with the Compassion art and philosophy collective). He works and lives in Nicosia. The exhibition continues through 30 June.
