Part IV

In the relief constructions projected in space with their characteristic plasticity, which the artist recently made and deemed as being special constructions, we see connections harmonized creatively out of the artist s immediate past, all the way back, such as in The Mirror (1986). The creation entitled The Bicyclist's Dream (1986), offers through a chromatic and optical over-view, the kind of pattern which belongs within the framework of spatial poetry. Forms from the distant post such as in The Roses (1986), contain immediately recognizable and extremely suggestive symbols, The abstract background enfolds a primitive dynamism expressed through an ordered radiating chromatic element, a hallmark which invokes associations with a work from his expressionist period, as in a woman against a background of stripes, increasing the intensity of the composition because of the discrepancy which is created by the absolutely figurative presentation of the main theme.

Just as the unexpected element which is expressed here, not only through the basic motif itself, but also on the technical side and inspiration, totally coincides with the manner in which the work is constructed, we believe that the artist is now traversing a superbly efficacious period, a period which is as vivid as a conclusion but simultaneously a starting point for the expression of yet another ramification of his highly ramified sensitivity.

Christos Caras is hyper-sensitive, not only as a creator, but also as a human being - in his daily communication with others - and has always expressed this sensitivity of his, both spherically and as basically as possible, in the figurative area. This sensitivity is cultivated in his work to an extreme through his personal experiences and particularly acute recollections, and is deciphered inductively and progressively with a characteristic impact when reviewed or, to put it better, is deciphered in the way we differentiate the various manners in which if is expressed. This is because the artist has not exhausted it, nor did he suddenly release it, in order to content himself, from then on, with one and only one Godsend solution. He ferreted out this sensitivity of his, through his personal ferment. He apprehended and deciphered it from many points of view and visual angles, in order to orchestrate it in his works in a different manner each and every time.

Decipherable in his designs, in the painted compositions, in sculptured objects and in the constructions which bear a total likeness in image and reality, this sensitivity is experienced by Caras through the impulse of a cyclical, circular process. It is, in short, as if he were following along a track he has traced out himself, while at the same time the psychology of the early external-to-internal movement is found in this later work in the counter motion of a spiral. But never, never has the central core eluded him.

Liberated and protected because of his ability to perceive the fleeting manifestations of fashion, Caras has never been in a hurry to prove anything, not even to himself, Nor has he benefited from all that was rightfully his.

Being specially sensitive, he is able to tune into the chords of his emotional world, while at the some time, he is careful to control both directly and indirectly, through a preordained figurative discipline, his instinct and his expressions, whatever they may be; he is a painter who deciphers in his work only what has stimulated him both aesthetically and psychologically. The facility of his renewal has the same unknown quality as the allure of the sirens, like a current through wire, An endeavor to deal with the make-up of his personality in any other way would be irrelevant.

This is a personality that was nurtured by an extreme respect for what is quintessentially human and an instinctual feeling for the magic and the stimulation provoked by the plain of Thessaly. The atmosphere that this plain gives forth, derives from the uniqueness of its imperviousness to description, no matter how comprehensive and revealing this is credited as being, Here the transformations and the effects are magical in texture and in the multiplicity of their nuances. These transformations which were augmented in intensity and in content when the Germans cut down the trees during the war and thus increased the feeling of visual limitlessness.

The rustling of the corn and the swaying of the grass under the caress of the wind, The fluttering of the birds that soar the skies repeatedly and tirelessly, The haze which develops and spreads suspended at some distance from the earth, moderating and blunting every possible sharp point, provoking countless hallucinatory experiences and forming an inexhaustible number of images. The diffuse but ever so real ramifying forms and expressions which represent the eroticism of the plain. All these will supply the motive force for post-realistic works which seem only by chance to have any connection with the creations of the European surrealists.