Presenting works with a common intention but a unique perception, the Stand in Line - Art Space gallery invites them for their inaugural visual appearance in Cyprus. With compositions of intense theatricality, Lili Belivanaki directs moments of everyday life that are atmospherically transformed by her surreal aesthetic language. The pen is not only implemented as a visual tool but a generator of new worlds, with main qualities of fiction, expression and detail. Its skill becomes evident in the seriousness and rawness with which it approaches the emotional contrasts that characterize the human experience. In the works of Nikos Siskos, utopian compositions deal with the conflicts of consciousness that take place in the inner personal world of each person. In a dialectical process of transformation, the ‘strange’ becomes the familiar, troubling the viewer and subsequently forcing him to recognize himself in it. The process of demystification is carried out through illusion, taking elements taken from their original environment and placing them in a new one, influenced by queer pop culture and modern consumerism. By using strong symbolic elements in the three-dimensional space of his enigmatic figures, his works offer us alternative forms of reality. In contrast to the works of the other two artists, Vivi Papadimitriou brings intense dark tones to her visual expression. Rejecting the elegance of realism, but without sacrificing detail, she presents worlds characterized by tension and mysticism. Papadimitriou's worlds are created through a metaphysical approach, which, together with her mastery of the art of printmaking, give the sense of a world not very different from our own, but which has been categorically symbolically and experientially influenced by her. From printmaking to painting, the technique is utilized to render the texture, style and feel of these imaginary settings. Each artist's works fall into their own category of surrealist typology and aesthetic approach that, as a whole, and without questioning, focus on man. Paradoxical yet at the same time familiar, these worlds touch and then exceed the limit of realism, magnetizing the gaze and offering an experience between illusion and reality.
Irene Henkin
Art Historian
