This exhibition, with the inquiring title ''I don't know'' is the second solo exhibition of George Chountas. In this series of artworks, the act of painting begins without preplanning, with expressionistbrush strokes, arbitrary lines and sharp punctuations on the white surface of the canvas.Along the way, through a process of self-observation, the painter’s actions become controlled and orchestrated allowing coherent forms, tones and shapes to emerge out of the thickening or the dispersion of the painting substance. Form creation is the result of the artist's personal look while observing himself. In this sense, it is not a construction process but rather a series of predetermined and stylized gestures, as individual attempts to delve into the very meaning of the emerging shapes, in their interaction with the white canvas.
The forms exist through their dialectical relationship with the white space, the light of which either fractures and penetrates them, or merges harmoniously with them, or playfully interacts with them.The exhibited drawings are a continuation and also an evolution of the artist's previous workand thus preserve unchanged, the creative core that constitutes the basis of his art production until now. This is evident in the decisiveness of his renderings, the maturity of the forms and also in the consistency and continuity in the shaping motifs that constitute the artist’s distinct style, or the identity of his work.
'' I Don't know '' Gallery 7 Athens (2024)
After a personal loss, the death of his father six years ago, George Chountas began to create works with the theme of the earth. The agricultural activities to which his father had dedicated his entire life, constituted the main stimulus for a series of works, where the visitor can identify elements of nature, but also of human activity: birds, trees, and roots meet wine presses and tractors in unexpected compositions. Chountas, choosing elements related to the earth, creates a new continent that seems to travel and float. In the artist's canvases, we find a new place free from anything old and beyond any designation and anything that can divide. It is a world that can exist next to us, gathering all the positive elements of life, a non-place above descriptions. As he says himself, it is "like taking pieces of earth from everywhere and creating something new. A new world that has been purified from anything unpleasant. Static pieces in constant motion, which seem to transcend death."
The second central thematic axis of the exhibition is the element of writing. In a series of impressive large-scale works, thoughts attempt to be captured in written word, without ever managing to take on a clear form. Thoughts seem to overshadow the writing and are depicted artistically as mist. Ultimately, language is covered by what surpasses it and is disconnected from its meaning. Along the axis of writing, there is also the video installation accompanying the exhibition, while in smaller-scale works, the artist's influence from Japan becomes apparent.
''Floating Land'' Gallery PES Polytropon Kalyvia Attiki (2022)
