> View CV

‘urban materials’
By PEDRO A. SERRA y BAUZA

Motifs, textures and qualities, develop on the canvas, like armchairs, clothes, umbrellas, carpets. Almost always clothing materials.
Karakatsanis speaks about something he knows very well, trying to keep the balance between the description and the conceptual disposition to put forward views about the urban landscape.
Once more, he reflects an experiential relationship with what he embarks on, code messages in a diary, views, queries, secret or unconcealed fetishes.
It is a humanistic approach, with the human figure missing, like in most of the series in the past, as it is the target itself (cities 1985), (bags 1986), (imprints 1987), (clothes 1989), (houses 1989), (carpets 1991), (flags 1992), (Vathis sq. 2001), (on wall 2003), (G8+? 2003), (netting 2004).
Karakatsanis implies and does so in a straightforward way. Thus he engages the viewer in a second and third evaluation of his work, taking risks, with the hasty conclusions entertained by the “syndrome” of the meaning or the fast and superficial choice of familiar, stereotyped, post-modern titles.
The painter here, and I hope in the future too, does not drift into brashness or loud statements that will possibly be quickly revised tomorrow. He avoids in a refined and responsible way, his affiliation to the “devoted” obsession with putting forward questions and conclusions that, I’m afraid, do not interest people, who will eventually appreciate the project and are the source of inspiration.
The visual product is optimistic, which I do not see often in art nowadays and his materials are simple, identifiable and mature. He knows very well his field and, most notably, how to handle it.
Although I tend to disregard the artist’s nationality, I’d hazard the guess that Karakatsanis originates acts and expresses through purely original European aesthetic media, which is important, typical and defies time, in a universal artistic market, which desperately needs originality and the artist’s individual expression.
Palma de Mallorca, 5 February 2005 Pedro A. Serra y Bauzá Chairman of the "Es Baluard"
Foundation of the Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

> Return to Artists