FLUID ORDERS

The exhibition Fluid Orders opens a dialogue between two seemingly divergent artistic positions that nevertheless draw on a similar art-historical and anthropological foundation. While Vasilis Avramidis uses the canvas as his medium, Martin Piaček chooses marble to create his current sculptural works. In their carefully conceived compositions, both artists oscillate between figuration and abstraction, leaving sufficient space for viewers to decipher the works individually.

Vasilis Avramidis generates his visual motifs from a deep connection to nature, a thorough engagement with the works of the Old Masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and supplements these with architectural references and complexly orchestrated compositions of light. Recurring subjects – such as towering trees, moss, or overgrown architectural remnants – hint at the passage of time and the accompanying transformation of topoi. His compositions do not follow a linear narrative; they emerge through a kind of montage composed of personal memories, experiences, references and artistic models from art history, as well as contemporary impressions. Avramidis gradually superimposes multiple pictorial spaces and connects them associatively. The narrative remains open, and viewers are actively involved in the production of meaning.
In Avramidis’ works, the human figure appears merely as a trace; its presence seems like a slight hint in the space, even when it is constantly engaged in seemingly mundane everyday activities. Faces are deliberately omitted or only rudimentarily recognizable, as they would reveal too much, communicate too clearly or become too much like protagonists. The figures are gradually absorbed by nature, giving rise to a fused structure in which flora and fauna consistently dominate. Architecture, by contrast, serves as a counterpoint to organic wilderness. Wherever a built element appears, landscape suddenly becomes place.

Whereas landscape depictions were once narrative or, as in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, embodied a new understanding of the world, in Romanticism they became a projection surface for humanity’s relationship to infinity and transience. Landscape painting was therefore often less a representation than a conception of the world and a philosophical stance. The same holds true for Vasilis Avramidis, whose works are much more fragmentary, drawn from personal memory, experience, and knowledge.

Light composition is also fundamental to Avramidis’ pictorial structure, changing its effect within a single work and thereby dynamically structuring the space. For Avramidis, painting light moods is a kind of modeling of faces, bodies, and buildings, generating spatial depth and enhancing the contrast between light and dark. With the help of light, the artist also structures the pictorial space and guides the viewer’s gaze. At the same time, light symbolizes a momentum, a fleeting span of time that mediates between transience and becoming. In the juxtaposition of architectural relics and rampant vegetation, the ephemeral nature of human existence becomes particularly palpable: everything is transient, yet something new is constantly emerging.

For Martin Piaček, the process of creating something new from what already exists is as well a central theme; however, his starting material is marble, originally a symbol of permanence and immortality. Through careful craftsmanship, Piaček is able to subtly temper the weight and massive opulence of the material. In keeping with Baroque tradition, the artist moreover succeeds in imbuing his material with an aura of timelessness.
Slowly and deliberately – both as a conscious artistic decision and in response to the specific properties of the material – Piaček unfolds his working process over the course of months. From the raw stone, he removes rough blocks, models, grinds, and polishes until figurative forms gradually emerge from the amorphous mass. Every strike, every movement is part of a dialogue with the material, aiming at transformation.

Unlike in cultural history, where marble primarily served to immortalize deities, heroes, and rulers, to create funerary monuments or sacred architecture, or to construct temples and palaces that demonstrated power, prestige, and superiority, Piaček consciously adopts a subjective and contemporary perspective. His works are, in a sense, both collective and personal introspections, providing immediate insight into time, space, and human existence.

Time serves as the common denominator connecting artist, material, and viewer. The fine cracks, the patina, and the traces left by the artist’s tools function simultaneously as archive and mirror of Piaček’s physical labor. Here, two bodies meet – the body of the artist and that of the stone – sharing metaphorically a common temporal axis. The process of working through the material implies wear on both sides: the material changes under the artist’s intervention, while the artist himself experiences the physical effort and exertion.

Piaček’s motifs, on the other hand, are transhistorical and coexist hierarchically equal within a single work. In “To Nurture”, for example, two horizontally stacked oval, elliptical forms constitute the corpus of the sculpture – they are potatoes. As everyday tubers, they appear unremarkable, yet they symbolize survival, settlement, and social developments. While their gentle irregularities, dents, and curves suggest a natural, living texture in the stone, crystals, a square, or festoons emerge from their sprouts – signs of nature’s hidden order. Yet in Piaček’s sculptural works, naturally grown structures repeatedly contrast with human-made forms, imbued with layered symbolic meaning.

Accordingly, the works of Vasilis Avramidis and Martin Piaček can be understood as catalysts that reflect on cultural heritage, humanity, and nature, reveal connections and oppositions, and explore fundamental questions of collective and individual existence with regard to identity, integrity, and history.

Vanessa Bersis