The painting of Sotiris Sorogas has been well received by reputable art critics who have touched upon the profundity of its contemplation in their analyses. As you read their reviews, you wonder what unknown aspect of his oeuvre remains to be investigated from a fresh viewpoint. You almost become discouraged. No recourse is left but to relive your first encounter with his work, risking the possibility of repetition or banality.

Sotiris Sorogas' painting flourished in the climate created in the 70s by two converging currents: the revival of interest in drawing, and the minimalist movement, which developed as a reaction to the extravagance and excess of Pop Art. By its very nature, drawing has a tendency, towards the austere and the monochrome. It is favoured by Minimalism (the art of the minimum), which impels it in the direction of persistently recurring themes and discourages dissipation and diversity.

In this historical climate Sorogas discovered the alibi of his own investigations, or, to put it more accurately, his own inner submersions. For the images set before us by the painter are highly internal. Reflections of a reality touched by a contemplative eye and transformed into pure spirit.

We spoke above ofrecurring themes. From the very beginning ofhis career, Sotiris Sorogas has concentrated his attention on minor motifs, variations of which recur in series of works: stones, marble, dry stone walls, pieces of old, rotted wood that once supported roofs now collapsed, rusty old pieces ofiron from once useful tools and machines, female figures from old faded photographs.

What is the secret thread that weaves invisible bonds between these motifs? All his subjects, every form of material -stone, wood, iron -are imprinted with the traces of human toil, the toil that once assembled them to serve the purposes of life: a fence, a dry stone wall, a house wall, a beam, a roof, a plough, a machine, a photograph that prevented the youth of a beautiful girl from fading. And then time came along, conqueror of all things, inexorable. And destroyed houses and dry stone walls, opened black, ominous cracks, cast down roofs and beams, gnawed at iron with rust, turned old photographs yellow.

Time, the `untamed sculptor of men' as Elytis saw him, is the leading actor in this art. Time and his ineluctable purpose: decay and death. The familiar climate of decline, the familiar climate of Sorogas's painting is silence. Silence that functions as a necessary precondition for the spectator to experience the image. Silence that entraps us cunningly in its maelstrom, in its unheard echo, bringing us face to face with the enigma of existence itself.

What is the antidote to time, to decay, to death? Memory and art; art as the ark of memory. Sorogas's painting calls upon this double, tried-and-tested exorcism to counter decay and death.

This, in my opinion, is the message whispered in low tones by the art of Sorogas. The artistic codes by which it is conveyed are of the same order. The painter has succeeded n creating a kind of painted drawing, an ascetic script, a script almost not made by human hand', that more closely resembles a mnemonic reflection of the image than an imitative imprint of visible reality.

It is equally amazing how the artist has succeeded in retaining in these urbane monochrome works the tangible quality of the material, the traces of the former use of things. This is owed to the skilful, highly sensitive interpretation oflight. The tactile values, as Berenson called them, translate the landscape oflght onto a surface. The tired, effete surfaces, wrinkled by use and time, of the objects selected by Sorogas challenge the light to caress them, to project, through episodes of decay and through shadows and internal light, their material existence, their special relationship with time. This remorseless light is Greek light. Light that exorcises ghosts and the fear of death. Beneath this light, even the image of decay is transmuted into an epiphany.