Sotiris Tzamouranis, Elektra Tzamouranis und Dimitris Tzamouranis
Vernissage |13|09|18 19 Uhr
About four years after Dimitris Tzamouranis visited the zone contemporaine for the first time in 2014 and exhibited his monumental figurative altarpiece «Melancholia», the artist, originally from Greece, returns to Bern. In addition to a whole series of new images, the zone contemporaine will also exhibit works by Dimitris' father Sotiris and his daughter Elektra. All three share not only the common origin and family, but also their profession. While Sotiris Tzamouranis deals with his homeland of Greece in his more classical landscape paintings, Elektra Tzamouranis deals with dreams in her current series of works. In her abstract-figurative watercolour works, the art student attempts to visually capture this unclear, flowing state between sleep and alertness in its different colours.
Literally flowing is also the sea that Dimitris Tzamouranis shows in his paintings. Born and raised in the coastal town of Kalamata, Dimitris experienced the Mediterranean up close, in all its many facets. Compared to the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian Ocean, it is a comparatively small water basin, yet the Mediterranean can not only be misinterpreted as the calm and familiar «Mare Nostrum». If one looks at the seascapes of Dimitris Tzamouranis, the viewer will not see a calm and domesticated image of the sea. In the picture «39° 21´N - 25° 18´E», the waves rise foamingly under a threateningly dark cloudy sky. No man and no country seem to be even close to reach from here. Left to themselves, these waves appear to be at some point on any of the oceans. If there was not the title Dimitris Tzamouranis gave to the picture: «39° 21´N - 25° 18´E».
These are the coordinates of one of the many places Tzamouranis has sailed in his own sailboat in recent years. They do not only refer to a small point on the sea between the Greek islands of Lesbos and Limnos, but yet through them the dramatic significance of the painting that already echoes in the foaming waves becomes apparent: the sea pictured is neither calm nor tamed. On the contrary, the coordinates refer to one of the many places where a refugee ship has sunk in the Mediterranean in recent years. In his series of pictures of shipwrecks, Tzamouranis also picks up on this topic, while these pictures show stranded refugee boats.
In the media, all these ships sink a second time, not in the waves, but in a flood of images and news. They are barely noticed by the general public. Tzamouranis' paintings, on the other hand, locate these catastrophes exactly in the Mediterranean and can be read in their permanence as monuments to these human tragedies.
Special thanks for the collaboration to the Galerie Michael Haas.