Volume L, No 3, July-September 2012 - Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Candle in the Trench
If, as Seferis reminds us, “the strong craftsman is
one of the most responsible individuals born in
this world,” then the Office Gallery maintains and
upholds that sense of responsibility. As a place of
“handcrafted” ideas, the Office Gallery continues
the heritage of the handmade, while at the same
time refining and redefining craft, demonstrating
a postmodern willingness to pose tradition against
the new, to draw from and blend both the dark and
bright sides of all traditions.
How does the Office Gallery function? The Office
Gallery serves as a meeting place for “handcrafted”
ideas through thematic exhibitions. It
hosts the work of the niche fashion designer
Carol Christian Poell and functions as a personal
and professional escape for writer Tassos A.
Gkekas. The Office Gallery stands as a triptych
comprising three separate yet linked functions: a
meeting place for the Handmade, escape and professional
lieu. Each of its functions is autonomous
and distinct but, much like a Francis Bacon triptych
that acts as a single indivisible entity narrating
a particular story, the functions of the Office
Gallery meet and complement each other. Like the
unifying flow of mercury, dialectics and discourse
connect its three facets.
“Odos Eleftherias” by Tassos A. Gkekas,
Director of The Office Gallery
With the launch of the series of paintings titled
“Odos Eleftherias,” Christos Bokoros attempts
a direct conversation with spaces, buildings and
roads which are adjacent to or which lead to the
Green Line in Nicosia. Many of these buildings
are damaged and worn. One could say that they,
in turn, create the second crack
next to that of the Green Line.
Amongst these trenches, the
artist has installed his own
paintings, planting his own
“Freedom Street,” in the hope
that he will offer new fruits
and joyful vibrations to the
centre of town, quietly and
humbly “conspiring” with
all the domestic rejuvenating
powers. Bokoros’s flames: small, genuine carriers
of “Romiosini” (Greekness), of sorrows and of desires,
in their own way warm up a vital part of the
town within the walls. The artist communicates
directly with the spaces and monuments which remain
the birthplaces of Hellenism; he rekindles the
interest centres in the heart of the capital. As long
as Bokoros sows his rogue paintings as “signals”
at the “border” points in the trenches of old Nicosia,
he continues to remind us that broader parts
of our country, the very ends of our state, when illuminated
sufficiently, emerge gleaming and alive.
In the Artist’s Words
“I use surfaces damaged by previous organic uses
to incarnate my pieces, aside from the theme and
any representational skill, as a constant reminder of
a collective time and place from which my reasoning
originates, which I address in the final outcome
of my craft. I select my subjects on the basis of
recognition, both as native signals and as universal
symbols of communication between people and the
ineffable intimacy of the mystery which surrounds
the material objects around us. The process of preparation
and painting leads me, at times of concentration
and discipline, to unexpected realizations of self
and conciliation with our common condition, the
accomplished world. There, the surface of beauty
is revealed, and exceeded eternity and truth come
together. I yearn for these clearings, and these are
what I work for. I speak words, and painting moves
further, as if the matter and spirit it embodies is always
elsewhere, away from the images and their descriptions.
It holds a distance, however close. In this
distance, the aura preserves the secret and saves us.”
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