LIVING IN THE SHADOWS

On a late summer day, in 2019, in a student house’s backyard, Savvas stumbled upon this beautiful phenomenon: a peculiar shadow cast by a long-forgotten glass cup. The shadow carried with it the glass’ light refractions and this was casted on the floor tiles forming a peculiar image. At that point, he was mesmerized. He wondered how one happened to be there at the right moment to witness this. Savvas was fascinated by how the light from the sun was passing between the leaves of a tree and then hitting that exact spot where the glass cup was standing, thus creating this experience.

As a consequence, he began looking for shadows in everyday life situations but also trying to create stories with them through digital collaging and experimenting with live shadow-casting on surfaces(e.g. canvas). By the passing of time, the project gained more substance as Savvas became interested in the language and semiology of shadow forms, in their inherent primordiality, and in how their concept has been used in Psychology and Art. Simultaneously, he was curious about how this artistic endeavor was reflecting conceptually the stage of life one was in as a young emerging artist in Groningen who was “living in his shadows”.

Thus the paintings explore aspects of the human condition, the ephemeral, the exultation of unexpected visual phenomena, and essentially the beauty hidden in plain sight.