Dr. Georgios Fousteris: Introduction to „Nikola Sarić: Parables and Witnesses“

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The Resonance of Colours

Νicola Sarić operates in an area of communion and dialogue. His art addresses itself – as parables do – to everybody, according to their receptiveness, without exclusions. Sharp as a whetted blade, it identifies itself with the idiocy which controls the wisdom of the world. A scandal, a blast of love which duels with the self-sufficiency of logic. It is all there, people and objects, clear intimations and familiar symbols, recognizable in their every detail. Yet at the same moment they remain enigmatic and incomprehensible for anyone who is not as a child is, simple and receptive. The artist has tussled with the texts, has sensed and expressed the naked meanings. He has felt the agony that he might not listen, and will remain uncircumcised in heart.

The glance, the positions, the gesticulations, the shapes, the colours, all clear and lucid, with a frankness not admitting of delusions. Vision is activated as hearing and things become real. The apparent two-dimensional compositions create a space where the message of this life reverberates with intensity and silence. Shapes become meanings and colours pulse as an echo. Happiness is entwined with the sharpness of the inquiries. Death and hope, love and wrath, solitude and passion, falsehood and faith, humility and hypocrisy in their real dimensions and intensity. It does not flatter the beholder, nor does it attempt to teach him or her. Its only concern is the truth of things. The greatest of these is love. Before this unceasing pleading visual statement, no one can afford to be indifferent.

A Tradition for the Future

Νikola Sarić’s painting as a proposal for Christian art addresses the coyness which Christian creation has always faced as it is suspended between holy heritage and the need to express the experience of it in a genuine way over and over again. The artist returns to the future of tradition without the anxiety of continuity. His is not a personal art. Contemporary and perennial, he transcribes in a personal and unique manner the experience which recognizes and is recognized as one common to all. Sarić’s proposal is not concerned with visual inventions and discoveries, but with the exploration of primary meanings. It is art both subordinate and liberated, free of vacuous self-assurance, but ready to commune with life now and forever.

Georgios Fousteris, theologian, Dr. of Byzantine Archeology

Introduction to the exhibition „Nikola Sarić: Parables and Witnesses“ at Mount Athos Center, Thessaloniki 2016

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Ο Δρ Γιώργος Φουστέρης για την έκθεση Nikola Sarić: Παραβολές και Μάρτυρες
Download as a PDF file (text in Greek)