As we begun with the previous exhibition, Apostolos Georgiou’s solo show One by One continues Rodeo’s new programme direction in which exhibitions are spread across both spaces in Piraeus and London. Following the opening of the exhibition in Piraeus on 4th June with eleven large paintings, the show at Bourdon Street opens on 2nd July.

In this new body of works we are confronted with an abundance of situations that take place in Georgiou’s familiar undefined interiors. But for a change, some situations are set outdoors. Georgiou’s outdoors, though, can be as claustrophobic and airless as his interiors.

With a background in architecture, he treats the interior and the exterior space similarly. Be it a mountain horizon or a balcony, the perspective is what sets the psychological backdrop, the stage upon which events occur.

The nature of man unfolds in various works. Isolation, failure, and seeming irrationality are recurring conditions his subjects undergo. Never, though, are they unrealistic. The artist’s main material is human nature and its abyss.

And as is always the case, each painting tells a different story.

As a writer of short stories, the artist composes large-scale paintings in which words have been replaced by rapid strokes; an extension of his body embodying the narratives his heroes undergo. A series of acts, some might even call them performances, take place: the story in the artist’s head, the one in the artist’s body as he applies the story to the canvas, the viewer confronting the painting. As the title of the show suggests, at a moment when the collective is challenged, we are being singularized as entities but also as viewers.

There’s nothing as old as story-telling. But Georgiou’s no wandering troubadour. He hides underground, applying his anecdotes with acrylics on canvas. Too tragic to be comic. Too comic to be tragic.

A social gathering in what seems to be a private estate, with various groups of people clustered together, dressed for the occasion, unaware of the man on the outside who has climbed a tree to peer over the solid wall that separates them.

The child screaming at the sight of an unusual creature in the hands of a gentleman – her father scolding him on a public square.

A man consoling a woman consoling another man.

Symbolism but yet not, metaphors but not really, neither reality; instead all of the above are valid and can be invoked in describing what is before us.

If there is a macho feminist type then this is what Georgiou is. If not, then this is what he is regardless.

Unsettling imagery in neutral backgrounds. The colours are dimmed and one recalls the artist once saying about the tonality of his palette that it owes its nature to the intensity of the natural light. An interesting remark about painting that is born in a basement, eyes trained under the extremity of sunshine.

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