Panayiotis Tomaras

Panagiotis Tomaras’ photography series 50 Hz does not refer to some event as rather to a repetitive procedure. This repetition results in the portrayal of whichever reality in the form of a space-time labyrinth bereft of vanishing points and points of reference. Like an echo, the photographs multiply the occurring event – death taking place in some movie – laying out synchronically its endless aspects. Focusing on the unfolding of the event already caught on celluloid, Tomaras represents it by differentiating it. Every version of the event requires the destruction of its precedent: the employed technique is based on the continuous unfolding/exposure of the photographic film and the ensuing altered representation of the event.

50 Hz are meta-images, images about other images, constituting a typical effort of the art of postmodernity to talk about topical issues while exploring its own limits. At the same time, the resulting imagery claims its autonomy as it seeks aesthetical integrity. It is not easy to define the form of these pictures where repetition coexists with difference, creation with destruction, glamour with sublimity, plasticity with the grotesque. Yet the difficulty of definition is perhaps an innate characteristic of Tomaras’ approach and thus a potential asset. Accepting the intertextuality of this meta-art, the spectator experiences his/her personal feelings and draws his/ her own conclusions profiting from another characteristic of contemporary art, the liberation of form from content. The beholder is consequently driven to read 50 Hz as forms. Spacious enough to accommodate his/her own meanings. Sufficiently attractive to force him/her place those meanings inside them.

EVANGELOS ZOIDIS