Art Seen is delighted to present the group exhibition Painting Notes curated by Maria Stathi. New works will be exhibited by participating artists: Raymonde Beraud (CY), Gary Colclough (UK), Panayiotis Doukanaris (CY), Vangelis Gokas (GR), Jost Münster (DE), Eleni Phyla (CY) and Andreas Savva (CY). The exhibition will run until the 20th of July 2018.

«The exhibition focuses on new approaches and perceptions of contemporary painting, while attempting to answer the questions raised of what painting means today. The works demonstrate the unparalleled breadth and diversity that the practice of painting guarantees, but also the ability to deal with and respond to both contemporary as well as timeless questions. Exercising practices inherent in the traditional principles of painting and other formalistically exemplary and liberated, using "unorthodox" materials and surfaces, the artists highlight and exploit the inexhaustible nature of the medium of painting.

Doukanaris’ threaded formalities, Phyla’s conjunctive comparisons of the object and the surface of the painting, Beraud’s topographical and organical aspects of the work, Goka’s "portraits of the least", Münster’s perforated and narrowly screens, Savvas’ enclosed geometrical forms and the schematic schematics of the rhombic motifs, confirm the conviction that painting has been and continues to be a prominent practice of expression and representation: a practice that makes the creative task of reasoning as well as critical wording. »

Dr Savvas Christodoulides, Artist – Assistant Professor at Frederick University

RAYMONDE BERAUD “My paintings are developed through a long process of repeated additive and subtractive procedures with oil paint on canvas. Compositional elements coexist with more unconventional devised gestures, retaining aspects of immediacy and accident alongside more constructed painterly passages. The paintings trace a journey that has no mark governing beginning or end - they are a consequence, a record, the image of their own execution. ”

Raymonde Beraud was born in 1989 in Limassol, Cyprus. Lives and works in London, UK.

Beraud studied Painting at Royal College of Art in London (2013) and at The Slade School of Fine Art in London (2011). Recent solo exhibitions include: Raymonde Beraud at Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2013); and James Fuentes, New York (2015). Other group shows include Camel ?lues at Kinman Gallery, London (2015); Apparatus 22 “Buy me a mystery” & Nicodim Collection, Bucharest (2014); Pattern Recognition at Ana Cristea Gallery, New York (2013); Asylum for the mentally chill at Kinman Gallery, New York (2015) and the Santorini Biennale of Arts, Santorini (2012). She has also exhibited in Dubai, London and Miami. Her work is part of private collections in London, Hollywood, Los Angeles and New York.

GARY COLCLOUGH “Before making my paintings my process begins by searching through existing photographs of the natural world; images of woods I have never walked in and trees I have never seen or touched. I’m looking for a certain ordinariness, a degree of blankness onto which I can project. I willfully misinterpret these images, imagining their stillness as loaded with the potential of imminent discovery or catastrophy.”

Gary Colclough was born in 1977, Exeter, UK. Lives and works in London.

Colclough studied his BA at The Chelsea College of Art & Design (1996-1999) and MA at Central Saint Martins (2008-2009) where he also currently teaches. Recent solo exhibitions include: Neither From Nor Towards, Art Seen, Nicosia, Cyprus (2017), Choreography of Fragments, La Galerie Particuliére, Paris (2017); Material Symmetry, William Benington Gallery, London (2015); Other Worldly, dalla Rosa Gallery, London, (2014). In 2013, he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize which coincided with a show at The Jerwood Space, London. Selected group exhibitions include: The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018 upcoming); Greystone Industries, Suffolk (2016); Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, Xi'an, China (2016); Griffin Gallery, London (2015); Identity Gallery, Hong Kong, (2013); P.P.O.W. New York, (2012); Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam (2012); Collection No 1.Interior and the Collectors, Lyon (2011); A.P.T. Gallery, London (2011); The Power Plant, Toronto (2008); and at Nettie Horn, London (2007). His work is in private collections in London, Berlin, Paris, Nicosia, New York and Hong Kong.

PANAYIOTIS DOUKANARIS “The works presented in the exhibition are the result of a continuous research in painting and the possibilities of the medium. In my work, canvas is the conditional carrier of the image and it works as the main mean of expression with an emphasis on investigating the materiality. The canvas is transformed, manipulated and re-weaved, omitted and altered by overturning the usual relationship of the supported image and by giving another dimension. In other words the image loses its superiority. Hence the strict boundaries between what is considered to be painting, sculpture and installation are redistribute in order to broaden the field.”

Panayiotis Doukanaris was born in 1991 in Nicosia, Cyprus. Lives and works in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Doukanaris studied Fine and Applied Arts at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and in 2016 he received his M.A in Fine Arts from Birmingham City University, UK. In 2016-17, he worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Visual and Applied Arts in Fine Arts in Thessaloniki. Selected group exhibitions include: I Like Us, Institut Francais de Thes, Thessaloniki; Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; Teloglion Foundation of Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2017). 7th Biennale of Fine Art Schools Athens, Theoharaki Foundation, Athens, Greece; Cypriot Young Creators, Teloglion Foundation of Art, Greece (2014).

VANGELIS GOKAS “Numerous small portraits, the size of a matchbox, seek a close viewing, unlike the one the audience today has been accustomed to. They are about individuals, alive, or not anymore, unknown or famous ones, with whom Vengelis Gokas has, or has had an essential or occasional relationship, people that captured his gaze or his mind, for long, or for a mere moment, that either influenced him, or were themselves influenced by him, deliberately or not. We recognise writers, visual artists, politicians, actors, yet we also encounter other figures, unknown to us, or entirely fictional. In between, abstract forms, or images of object serve as parenthetic links. The miniscule size and the similar to a toddler’s toy form, help waive the extreme severity of the portraits, any references to the history of art, personality cult hints or narcissistic dimensions of the subject. It’s all about those subtle memories in one’s mind, that like fibres, weave rational or associative narrations. These small bricks can be repositioned at will, like the thoughts in the course of a day.”

Vangelis Gokas was born in Korinthos, Greece in 1969. Lives and works in Athens.

Gokas holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Aristotle University of Thesaloniki, Greece and two Masters degrees in Fine Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts and the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain. To date he has had nine solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows both in Greece and abroad including National Museum of China, Beijing (2017); Athens Biennale, Athens (2011); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Benaki Museum and The Kosova Art Gallery, Kosovo (2012). Since 2011, Gokas is an assistant professor at the School of Plastic Arts of Ioannina, Greece. His works are part of major private and museum collections such as Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, and others.

JOST MÜNSTER “Jost Münster’s collage based method imports spliced and repeated components as part of a painting space. Works are often resolved as free standing or hanging structures which frame space as well as capture small incidents of process. Working from his urban surroundings, Münster uses shapes from fragments of facades, silhouettes and individual geometric elements. His paintings and installations in wood, paint and paper experiment with colour and the painted surface to create a series of works that explore the reaches of representation. His work spans and connects painting and sculpture; but also pushes and tests the boundaries of what a painting can be.”

Jost Münster was born in 1968, in Ulm, Germany. Lives and works in London.

Münster studied Fine Art and Intermediales Gestalten at The Fine Art Academy Stuttgart and received his M.A in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College of Art, London. Selected solo exhibitions include: Casual Encounter, Stadtgalerie, Saarbrucken, Germany (2017); New Neighbours, Tintype, London (2016); Dopellegänger, Victory Gallery, Portland, US (2012); MARGINI - Arte Contemporanea, Massa, Italy (2011). Recent selected group exhibitions include: Whitstable Biennale {} Interval, The Waiting room, Whitstable Railway Station (2016); Unpainting \ / resurfacing, University of Hertfordshire Galleries, Art & Design Gallery, Hatfield (2015); Limber – spatial painting practices, co-curated by Münster & Cherry Smyth, Herbert Read Gallery (2013); Canterbury & Grandes Galleries de L’ESADHaR, Rouen, France, (2013); Crazee Golf, Tintype, London, (2012); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (2012); A Sort of Night to the Mind, Artary Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany (2011); Mostyn Open 2011, Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno, Wales (2011); Polemically Small, Charlie Smith Gallery, London, (2011); Polemically Small (The Future can wait), The Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles (2011); Polemically Small, Garboushian Gallery, Los Angeles (2011); Ground Control, Museum 52, London (2010); Hulahoop, 401contemporary/ London projects, London (2010); John Moores 26, Liverpool Biennial, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2010); Das vertraute Unvertraute, Wuerttembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2010); Urban Origami, PM Gallery and House, London (2010); Mexican Blanket, Museum 52, London, (2010).

ELENI PHYLA “Colours and their relations,

pop culture and its paradoxes

There are some objects, situations, colors, people that magnetise me.

Perhaps because they have some relation to my old clothes, past years, a style, an old interest.

It is complicated to understand the genre of this attraction. It is some kind of excitement.

I over wanted these items.

Their story, was also magnetising. Why their owners kept them even though they were broken?”

Eleni Phyla was born in 1988 in Nicosia, Cyprus. Lives and works in Nicosia.

Phyla graduated from Athens School of Fine Arts (2015) and studied at the School of Fine and Applied Arts of Thessaloniki (2007-9), as well as the École National Supèrieure des Beaux Arts in Paris (2011-12). She recently presented the solo exhibitions T?OPICAL, at Circuits and Currents (2016), and Air Sale: Inside/ Outside, at Stoa 44 (2015), both in Athens. Her work has also shown in group exhibitions including The Presence of Absence, or the Catastrophe Theory at NIMAC, Nicosia, Cyprus (2018); Koraï, Nicosia (2017); 3 137, Athens (2015); Folklore Museum, Aegina, Greece (2014); Heraklion Crete Cultural Centre (2017); the Thebes Festival, in Greece (2015); Galerie Gauche et Droite Ensba, Paris (2012); Centre d’Art Contemporain de St-Restitut, Drôme Provençale, France (2016); and permanently to the Olympic Village, Innsbruck, Austria (2012).

ANDREAS SAVVA “My intention is to position the "Closed Motifs" on the painting surface to distributed patterns in the same way as my large installations. Every time, I build a space is independent from the material/medium but is always architecturally balanced and multiplied until there is no end. The dignity recurs: the continuous expansion of the space that human civilization develops. In this series, the surface of the painting plays a major role as I use a particular technique, which gives a very smooth, velvety surface in order to develop those motifs. This process represents the way I work. ”

Andreas Savva was born in 1970 in Kyrenia, Cyprus. Lives and works in Cyprus and abroad.

Savva has been involved in his artistic output with social, political and financial issues. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1991-1996) and attended the postgraduate programme in Digital Arts at the same School (2002-2004).

He has held over ten solo exhibitions and his work has been shown in many group exhibitions around Europe, including So Close Yet So Far Away: Contemporary artists from Cyprus, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2017); Mona Hatoum Art Workshop, Villa Iris, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain (2010); Open 12 International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations, Venice Lido, Italy (2009); Instant Europe, Villa Manin, Centre for Contemporary Art, Passariano, Italy (2004); the BIACS 1^st International Biennale of Contemporary Art of Seville, The joy of my dreams, Spain (2004); EUROPE EXIST, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2003). His  installations can been seen at The Fields Sculpture Park, OMI International Art Center, Ghent, New York (2016- )and at the 7^th edition of CONTEXTS International Festival of Ephemeral Art, Sokolovsko, Poland (2017- ). Savva presents his ideas, positions and skepticism through different materials and installations of large dimensions in situ. His work is open to comprehension without leading the viewer.

>Meet the artist: A series of talks by the participating artists will take place the last week of the exhibition.

Art Seen – 66B Makarios Avenue, Cronos Court, 1077 Nicosia, Cyprus

Opening Hours: Monday, Wednesday - Friday 15.30 – 19.00 and by appointment.

For additional information, please contact: Maria Stathi, Founder & Director +357 99624090 | +357 22006624 | info@art-seen.org