Regenaration by Kornilios

“What is it worth to love in art despite its riddle?”
Giorgio De Chirico

If technology and the automation of modern life help eradicate poetry and magic from our daily lives, art, and especially painting, is that power that again makes the world magical. Or, better, that makes it visible to those who cannot see the physical eyes. The latest, most recent generation of paintings by renowned and well-known creator Cornelius Papadimosthenes is called Regeneration and is the evolution and completion of the previous Rebirth section. And this is mainly because it recreates an integrated, perfect world-based and unit home, the “archetypal house”. What formerly would be called “The City Of Ideas”, that is, the ideal state that philosophers and artists want to place at the center of a society that does not understand philosophy and is indifferent to art. Recent paintings by Cornelius are also distinguished for their artistic integrity, the color of the work, the technical adequacy of the composition, the imposing visual effect, and their thoughtful, philosophical disposition. The viewer is impressed to see dense overlapping lines of an urban landscape, a standard structured space, with no horizon and perspective, a fairytale town created by a wise child like Hans-Christian Andersen and wondering, “Where did all the people go?” Actually. Recent works by Cornelius Papadimosthenes lack figures, faces. It could be said that people, frightened and anxious, hide in order to protect themselves in their homes, in their homes, where values ​​and ideals are still preserved. Where a new generation could be born free from the mistakes and sins of the past. A Regeneration. One could speak of looking at Cornelius’s compositions of serial painting whose purpose is image standardization, visual discipline and rhythm in the repetition of certain stereotypes. But the bright colors and the flat form of à la Matisse show that the painter, more than anything else, cerebral and prefabricated, seeks to impart spontaneous joy through the color pleasure, the almost magical function of the colors. As Papadimosthenes’ quasi-teacher Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) would like. For this reason, that is, to enhance the color dynamics of his compositions, he has lately been using LEDs to create three-dimensional constructions, a kind of painted light boxes in which all the romantic atmosphere of his subjects is literally taken off with the help of technology. True Regeneration! What is art, we wonder when looking at Cornelius paintings. Our inner garments, our security in a world where security has been lost. A kind of “ideal home” like the ones Papadimosthenes paints in which we will again hatch the lost collectibles and exterminate our loneliness. Regeneration! The alibi in our nudity! Perhaps our ultimate potential for a revolution without Messianic signs; as a religion without metaphysics – but by the terror of the present – and as a philosophy embodied in images and words. Art is a lie more precious than any other truth and an experience as exclusive as death. A kind of resurrection still in wear. Art is also that process that miraculously transforms the multiplication addition to satiate the few pentachio fish. The only thing here is that gossip has nothing to do with flooding, accumulation or the current over-supply of “goods”. Misery runs when the individual fails to make it as collective as the buzzing buzzwords are. Art remains the constant antidote, the only opportunity for true Regeneration.

Manos Stefanidis, Art Historian