Algis Kemezys' BORN IN STONE (composite photographs) NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM
Athens, Greece; January 15-March 15, 2015
Internationally exhibited photographic artist Algis Kemezys,
will be showing his recent work, Born in Stone (composite photographs of marble and ancient Greek sculpture) in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece in 2015. Photographed in
the Hellenistic world (Asia Minor and Greece), as well as in the Louvre and the British Museum, the sculptures depicted in this work are the most iconic and magnificent examples of Greek sculpting, the kind that has been imitated, but never quite equalled, for the last two and a half
millennia.
The marble which forms the backgrounds of the photographs is also from antiquity. Kemezys chose the holy rock upon which sits the Athenian acropolis, and that of the famed quarries of Paros Island, whose pure-white, translucent material inspired the greatest work of Phideas and of Praxiteles.
The fusion of the perfect, life-like sculptures to the delicate marble from which they sprung makes for images that linger in the pleasure centers of the mind as they propel the imagination into mythology. Presented in large- format, full-colour renditions, they tell the tales of a storied civilization whose artistry has informed the very roots of western culture. The director of the museum, Dr. George Kakavās, declared Born in Stone the most original interpretation of ancient sculpture that he had ever seen.
This interest in sculpture and the infinite
visual possibilities of stone is an on-going theme in Kemezys' work. It began in childhood, when his mother showed him that he could find "faces" on stone, and culminated in his award-winning, hour-long documentary Mimetoliths, a visual poem to the anthropomorphic rocky highlights of the island of Crete (Greece). This latest work continues the quest into the artistry that resides in stone all around us.