In our time, the art of photography often focuses on aspects of life in the big cities, familiar everyday life sceneries, and the alienation of the modern human. On the other hand, the Internet is flooded with photographs of beautiful landscapes, wearing out in a day as a computer screensaver. Well, Konstantina Theodoratou dares to turn our eyes back to nature and restore – without this being an end in itself– the quest for beauty at the heart of her artistic pursuits. Avoiding everything cliché, she concentrates in the microcosm and the macrocosm of Nature. The material object per se either blends in very distant frames, like a freighter peeking at the horizon, or comes out of focus through magnification, like the rain drop on the window captured in the artists shot. The element of water, the sea and rivers in motion, and the reflections of light on water constitute the major subject attracting the photographer's interest, referring to impressionist painters such as Monet, and the romantic landscape masters imposing a sense of grandiose, like Turner and Friedrich. Konstantina Theodoratou focuses on capturing the moment; a moment that will be forever bygone, in a split of a second. As light pervades the water or the clouds the forms dissolve, bringing out more lyrical or more dramatic aspects of nature. The artist thus embraces a colourfulness referring to the abstract painters that applied the imposing visual language of pure colour, like Rothko. The artistic, painting-like feeling in these photographs stirs up emotion, only this time it is Nature itself that plays the leading role in the creation, while the artist's camera serves merely as the means of artistic expression. The aesthetical outcome could be described by the popular saying "nature paints." These photographs are taken in Santorini, Canton, and the rivers Rhine and Seine, but also from the window of Konstantina's surgery, reflecting the beautiful view of the Saronic Gulf; depicting familiar, yet unexplored places. The imposing artistic intervention of the art director Alexandra Tassopoulou re-arranges these images in groups of two to five. These in promptu groupings create synthetically exceptional images, with standalone artistic impact, with the homogeneity of colour tones prevailing as the major criterion for their combination, against any sense of narration. The individual photographs correlate (see for example, how light affects the surface of water) either to complement each other or to disaffiliate. Distant images, where the eye meets the horizon, coexist with close-ups exposing the texture of the materials, mostly water but also wood (boats or huts in Canton). Here, Konstantina Theodoratou is interested in the texture of things, and the insubstantiality of light, closeness and distance, as far as our gaze can sink into the horizon and abstractivity. There are no human forms, and the rare living creatures depicted are either totally embedded in water, or serve as symbols of the untamability of Nature. Out of these unique arrangements, I think "Union" stands out, the individual photographs of the setting overwhelmed by the orange vermillon colour tone; should we attempt a second, more humorous reading we could identify the phases of human relationships: Fuego, Insight, Bond, Diffusion. Two images escape the standard thematic and send us in a journey to the world of fairy tale: the first is a detail from a temple in Canton, and the second shows a big yacht aglow against the night sky, bringing to mind a white ghost against a navy blue background.. Konstantina Theodoratou, avoiding sugary landscapes, re-focuses on the essential relationship between man and nature, the ever-enriching source of inspiration for the imagination and the senses.

Irene Leontakianakou, Lecturer in Art History, University of the Aegean

Art Director: Alexandra Tassopoulou, artist