
Giorgos Rorris at the National Gallery Nafplion Annex
On Saturday 9th November, Giorgos Rorris visited the National Gallery – Alexander Soutsos Museum, Nafplion Annex where he had a conversation with young people, candidates for the School of Fine Arts, as well as art lovers in Nafplion.
Painter Panayiotis Tetsis, Giorgos Rorris’s master, impressed by his student, spoke highly of Rorris’s talent that undergoes “the ordeal of truth”. This process of unravelling the truth has been his main focus throughout his painting, recording the human figure and its identity on site.
The current periodic exhibition Somatographies: Contemporary Greek Painting from the Sotiris Felios Collection gives the audience the opportunity to get an insight on Giorgos Rorris’s artistic course through his works, i.e. “Elissavet” – one of his first nude women portraits, “Blue Alexandra”, as well as other paintings of smaller dimensions.
During the discussion, Giorgos Rorris focused on the nude portraits – a vital theme in his painting for the last fiftteen years – placed in the familiar space of his studio. Freed from their clothing and the social symbolism that they convey, the nude portraits mirror the painter’s endless effort to discover their identity through their sight. Only when the model finds their place in the studio, the painting process begins. The painting focuses on the body and, at the same time, evolves around it. The body itself dissipates its aura on the wall while the flooring boards are expanded outside the painting, in the viewer’s actual space.
Rorris characteristically noted that according to Nietsche “for a painting to be completed, fascination is crucial; the work of art is the result of the delicate balance between the Dionysian and the Apollonian element of human nature”. Furthermore, he highlighted the elements of his painting.