AMARYLLIS SINIOSSOGLOU

ARTIST STATEMENT

The thematic starting point of my artwork is the human experience of the fluidity of time.

By means of a versatile visual vocabulary, I am trying to gain a deeper understanding of this tragically dominating force: Time. My goal is to render as clearly as possible the clash between the isolation of the inner world of feelings and dreams and the outer world of reality.

The human presence is an essential element in my prints, although the actual human figure is not always visible. Sometimes this human presence is expressed in architectural fragments and interiors, derived from childhood memories. Using extreme vertical or horizontal compositions and parts of the human figure compressed by the burden of uncertainty, I am trying to express the inner agony of the human soul confronting time and death. The human figure is isolated in an undetermined space, at a nonspecific time, lost and crushed by forces with no ability to overcome or to understand.

My artist’s books, which make use of many different printmaking techniques, are fragments of memories: distant lands that tend to disappear through the oblivion of time. The book form, because of its tactile, intimate and sequential aspects, becomes an attractive visual field with infinite potential to be explored. I use traditional and experimental printmaking and bookmaking techniques as well as sculpture, painting, and even jewelry, in order to achieve a metaphoric narrative that functions as a whole, conceptually and aesthetically - in the book form.

The terra-cotta and bronze life size portraits represent specific persons who have influenced my life at various moments in different ways. Mute, desolated figures, echoing past generations, they express a sense of death, not a physical death, but a death of the soul, death as the loss of mystic sensation. These latter elements are obvious in their static forms, their fragmented features, and their relative installation within space. The figures, ranging from children to adults, are wandering in the dark space accompanied by the emptiness of the human soul.

My paintings address similar themes to those I am exploring in prints and sculpture. There are many apparent differences, not only in media, but also in scale, color, and imagery. But in the paintings I am dealing with the ravages of time in a closer, more intimate manner, including fractured pieces that could be found in the abandoned buildings of the prints. The ability to translate the glow and brightness of a pearl or a piece of rotted fruit is a formal tool that enables the exploration of the essence of my subject matter beyond a realistic rendering. The objects carry the weight of time and generation. Through the representational process, these broken and fragmented elements emerge from darkness. Colorful and bright, they are confronting their physical death with beauty and serenity. Subtle intricacies bring the composition to an imaginary dimension beyond time.

My visual elements function as images representing their own present reality, as well as an additional dimension of time. My goal is to constitute an ensemble of different realities in order to create an emotional vision. The feeling of nostalgia and loss, affected by time, along with the existential agony of the human soul is the creative impetus for my work. It is the motivating power to understand and express myself in an attempt of catharsis from a world of dreams, darkness, and memories that have always been intertwined with the world of reality in an incomprehensible manner. These three elements—dreams, darkness, memories—dominate my work and lead me to the illusions of a places consisting of liquid surfaces, faded dark colors, whispers and bright, distorted echoes.