Mr. Charalambos Bakirtzis Speech

Sergis Hadjiadamos, Metamorphosis, Annabelle Hotel, Kato Paphos, 8/6/2019

It is with great interest that I attend the opening of Metamorphosis, Sergis Hadjiadamos’ new exhibition, in order to share my thoughts with you upon his gracious invitation.

In processing his chosen theme on display here today, Sergis Hadjiadamos had had to conjoin, manage and tame the following factors:

1. The past and his character. 2. The topic of the exhibition, namely alteration of the objects due to physical deterioration and metamorphosis of the human figures. 3. The depiction of metamorphosis. 4. His fellow Pafians. 5. Measuring up against Andis Hadjiadamos.

Let me elaborate on these factors:

1. His past and his character. Sergis was born in 1975 in South Africa and grew up in Ktima, Paphos. The son of distinguished artist Andys Hadjiadamos, he had the opportunity to meet the city’s most renowned artists – Costas Economou, Yorgos Kotsonis, Andreas Charalambides, Clara Zacharaki, Andreas Makariou, Stass Paraschos – to talk with them and become influenced by them. As a student, he was apprenticed to Rinos Stefani, Susan Vargas, Mariam Souhanova Foukara and Yiota Ioannidou. Within this familiar circle, he gained knowledge of the local visual art vocabulary, the trends towards things and Paphos’ indelible light. After 1994, he pursued studies in various Workshops and Arts Schools in Athens until arriving finally at visual art technology and graphic design. Eventually, he did not attend the Athens School of Fine Arts, where compulsory processing of the form would, in my opinion, level his authenticity. He returned to Paphos and began to engage with used and trivial micro-objects, such as cut-outs, cigarette packs, books, envelopes, mostly food order pads from Hondros restaurant in Kato Paphos, by frenetically drawing on them, intervening into their usage and altering their nature. In fact, he has been relentless in this practice of artful intervention into things rendered active.

2. The topic of the exhibition, namely the alteration of objects due to physical deterioration and the metamorphosis of the humans. This very exhibition is a manifestation of intervention. It starts from the glass plate negatives that belonged to Spyros Haritou, the photographer of Paphos (1901-1990), then carries on via these glass plates and in fact ends with them – but in the meantime they have been modified in order to take on a larger meaning than the glass plates Sergis found in the basement of Haritou. Spyros Haritou was born in Kissonerga in 1901 and, as you all know, had for decades been the photographer of Paphos, tracing faces, families, groups of friends and landscapes onto glass with Balzac-esque indulgence. Sergis set out to use Haritou’s archive in order to bring out an album of unpublished photographs, an exhibition of daily life in Paphos – akin to what he had done with the 1974 bomb-wrecked port of Paphos. But then, there in the basement, something wondrous occurred. In his own words: “Time had left its own signature upon the glass plate. Humidity in the room had fused into the plates, crafting its own imaginary worlds”. The “natural, random fusion of the plates” brought to the surface a disfigurement of reality. The artist’s interest was intrigued by the random transfiguration of the objects, namely the glass plates, but also the random albeit definitive metamorphosis of the people pictured on them along with the vagueness of their identity. And so he changed course: instead of creating a photographic album, he set up this exhibition. In this respect, the contribution of Sergis Hadjiadamos consists of the tribute he paid to wear and tear as a sort of otherworldly design and an attempt at tracing the ever-evasive temporal dimension. He has honoured the absurd mirroring of the figures without really caring about what stands out and what lies behind, enchanted with the internal vibrations of the random that blends the truth with lies.

3. The depiction of metamorphosis. Sergis has partly maintained a friendly relationship to the material he has managed. He has worked with the plates in their initial use and printed them not on photographic paper but, with the help of technology, on aluminum plates in vivid contrast so as to turn those tokens of remembrance into autonomous works of art. A distinctly personal note is added via colour interventions into the faces, their erasure, as a manifest way of protesting not what they depict but the way they are depicted.

4. His fellow Pafians. His works, nevertheless, still contain the warm breath of what he appears to deny: scores of Paphians parade through his work, supplementing what they perceive with their mind’s eye. Through the hidden faces of the pictures, the eyes of present-day Paphians serve as the audience and the judge of the work on display today – artworks I encourage you to hang on the walls of your home.

5. Measuring up against Andys Hadjiadamos. What counts as art in this exhibition by Sergis Hadjiadamos is not visual art as we know it, namely colours and brushes, but the selection, the assessment and evaluation – indeed, his nodding affirmation to beauty’s distortion into ugliness due to wear and tear – the way he has chosen to display his work.

It is from processes like those that love of fellow human beings springs along with optimism for life itself; and this is the best case of comparison between father and son, one that safeguards continuity from Andys to Sergis Hadjiadamos.

Sergis Hadjiadamos is an engaging contemporary visual artist whose exhibition titled “Metamorphosis” opens today.

Sergis HadjiadamosSeptember 16, 2019