Eric Giovon:
Creative Varieties
Curator: Eleftherios Ikonomou
Vernissage:
Friday 2 August, 20:00 p.m.
Ibrahim Han Mosque, Fortezza - Rethymno
The Contemporary Art Museum of Crete presents since June 29th, at Ibrahim Han Mosque the exhibition Creative Varieties. An exhibition presenting photographs of the artist Eric Giovon curated by Eleftherios Ikonomou.
Eric Giovon is a director of photography. He was born and educated in New York City.
He started his career as a photographer alongside his father’s photographic shop in Brooklyn. His first photographs as an adolescent were views of the city. He preferred empty cityscapes with no people. So he walked on empty roads at night, photographing shadows, reflections with contrasts that fascinated him.
About the exhibition the Curator writes:
The exhibition “Creative Varieties” is a narration of images that existed in his mind. A celebration of photography in all its richness. The different themes that he chooses to put together indicate the multiplicity of his interests. Architectural cityscapes, woods, water basins reflections, landscapes real and staged, interior places populated by shadows of figures.
Space and time, are the two constitutive elements of his art.
Following the light innovations introduced by his favourite painters, Caravaggio and Goya, he introduces chiaroscuro effects that confront day light. The light that usually arrives from one source, one direction, creates an ambiguity and forms a perception that focuses on what is hidden below the surface of the large scale photographs. Details are not important. The essence is to concentrate on the main object of his interest and to create a feeling of simultaneity. Time collapses. The viewer cannot detect the real time of the pictures. Were they taken during the day or the night, maybe by the sun rise or the sunset.
The use of colour could give a few right answers. It is a riddle of identification of time and place. Everything is hidden behind a well programmed scheme. Whether an enclosed place, a cityscape and / or an open landscape, the angle of his camera defines first his main subject. Everything else is controversial, dream like . Through his technique of gradual shading, he goes from consciously exposed subjects, sometimes even in colour, to a grey zone of enigmatic, oneiric zones. This is the symbolic space left to the viewer’s free interpretation. The microcosm of the artist populated by his dream world recollecting his memories has no boundaries. It is a theatrical setting expecting extraordinary moments of action. A genius loci of memories that are created out of shadows and grey zones.
The old mosque is the right setting for this show. The highest place of the city, started operating after the Venetian occupation as a catholic cathedral (1580) which changed into a mosque after the Othoman occupation (1646). Today we celebrate the geometries of a quadratic basis, crowned by a dome. The enlarged pictures hang from a triangular shape.
Further information about the works of Eric Giovon can be found in www.ericgiovon.com, Instagram.com/lumino.
The exhibition will remain open until the end of October 2019. Please cosnult the opening days and times of the Fortezza.
CONTACT:
CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM OF CRETE
Community Enterprise of the Municipality of Rethymnon
32 Mesologhiou str., 74131, Rethymnon
Τ: +30 28310 52530, F: +30 28310 52689
E-mail: info@cca.gr • http\\:www.cca.gr
Dr. Eleftherios Ikonomou, www.artsetc.eu
