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In his solo show entitled “A Thesis on the Shelf”, Elias Kafouros  presents a series of drawings where a tangle of seemingly different stories unravels. These stories are being developed along intertwined paths. The relations created between individual forms arise either from instinctive and unconscious or from conscious and rational processes. Hence, despite the fact that the final image is articulated by classical forms, it acquires an intense psychedelic character. The structural complexity of the artist’s works undermines the clarity of the images, merges their limits and fertilizes new forms and associations. The more detailed the data that construct the partial narrations of the work are, the more obscure and remote the central narration seems.

During the past two decades a public space has been created that still remains “hidden” to the biggest part of society. It was born of needs and communication practices associated with the widespread use of the internet and the new technological tools. This space is a privileged field of questioning of the mainstream choices and it facilitates the dissemination of all types of alternative ideas, different cultural characteristics and minority practices. It is a public space which, despite its chaotic characteristics, brings out the primitive and the irrational desire as opposed to the rational, the controlled and the subjugated. Within this space new tribes and communities are being created, which revisit issues such as the redefinition of the citizen concept and the participatory democracy from scratch. In his works Kafouros seeks to reveal to the viewer this “invisible” world and to make him participant to the new, complex relationships and concepts.

Dominant elements in the artist’s works are the paths that define the relationships between people and objects depicted in their length. Relationships, evident and implicit, justified and irrational, are the true essence of the persons’ existence. Thus, a narration is being created, where time, in the Kantian sense of linear progression, establishes the links between human perception and space. In Kafouros’ work exist cinematic elements. The drawing process seems to start with a script and a casting. There are main and second roles, walk-ons, costumes, sets, lights and action. There is no sound, at least not yet.


* Elias Kafouros has been selected among other international artists for inclusion in “Vitamin D2”, an international anthology of contemporary art drawing, which will be release PHAIDON Press in May 2013.