Looking again and again at the works of Dimitris Kyriakos, we travel ever deeper into uncharted waters. This is because, on the one hand, abstraction, and on the other, the colors pulsating across the canvas—at times like blooming Japanese landscapes, at others like palimpsestic remnants of memory that composes and recomposes images, emotions, and associations—through the power of silence, draw us forcefully into the depths of human existence.

And how could it be otherwise, since Dimitris Kyriakos is, first and foremost, a psychiatrist, and knows better than most the hidden recesses of the human soul. Guided by his personal need for painting, which began in adolescence and always ran parallel with medicine, healing, and humanity, his artistic path unfolds as a personal journey that both challenges and defines him. Along this path are studies in art that have evolved with him over time.

As he characteristically states: “For me, painting and psychoanalysis are not two different things; one is the continuation of the other. Which came first, however, is open to discussion.”

Within the new body of work he presents at Art Zone 42 Gallery, titled Saying without Saying, we recognize an expressionist language that touches upon that of Gerhard Richter, yet differs through many elements, for while much connects the two artists, just as much separates them.

Kyriakos has been deeply influenced by the work of the significant German artist, as a film about Richter’s life and work became the occasion for him to return to painting after a ten-year absence. The greatest distinction within these innate affinities lies in color, beyond each artist’s experiences and vocabulary.

Dimitris Kyriakos uses pink boldly—a misunderstood color, rarely encountered in abstract expressionism or abstraction—with the aim of composing his personal narrative and articulating his own voice. As he himself believes: “Every good work begins with pink and ends with black. I do not know whether this is my own unconscious allegory concerning life and death, or carefree innocence and tragedy.”

Despite the artist’s metaphysical concerns, light plays an essential role in his work. This is due not only to his chromatic palette, but also to his perceptual and intellectual ability, and his desire to read the world from its luminous side, erasing the darkness that dwells in the corners and cracks of human nature.

Paris, 7/10/2023

Efi Michalarou
Art Critic & Exhibition Curator

Member of the Association of Greek Art Critics – AICA Hellas