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Bernier/Eliades Gallery in Athens presents Stratos Kalafatis second solo photographic exhibition “Thou shalt see me at Philippi”.

Following the exhibitions, ¨Athos / The Colours of Faith¨ and  “Archipelagos¨, Stratos Kalafatis, uses the historical phrase ¨We are going to Philippi¨ and invites us to his new journey, to the Tenagi of Paggaio, a region with multiple connotations, an ancient monument, a religious pilgrimage, a battlefield, as well as the artist’s place of origin.

The historic battle of Philippi in 42 A.D where Octavian and Marc Antony faced Brutus and Cassius in the greatest Roman civil conflict was the incentive for Kalafatis’ new body of work. The artist, using the traces of history as a connecting link, uncovers the active presence of the past in today’s reality. He connects old quests with new desires in an attempt to define the relationship between landscape and identity.

According to the artist:

“…There in the land of Edonis, when the light falls, Lycurgus, Orpheus, Dionysus and Persephone, meet the merchants, the soldiers, the workers, the shepherds, the poets, the peddlers, the refugees and the fugitives resting in the plain. And as night falls in the mud baths, in the camp of Brutus, the night turns to clay to cover the wounds of the greatest civil conflict that changed the history of the world.”

“This new series of works and diptychs of the exhibition, adopts Kalafatis’ familiar approach: a careful mix of genres, where landscape merges with portraiture, archaeological photography, and hybrid still life: the stacked skulls, a macabre objet trouvé, familiarize with systematic death; the battle scene of the Hellenistic sarcophagus as a sculptural snapshot that anticipates the photograph, depicts the timeless fate of man being ruthlessly torn apart like a wild beast; the mutilated statue, an ode to the violence of time as a slow but ultimate war, converses with the portrait of the standing man lovingly holding his artificial leg… ” Heracles Papaioannou, Curator MOMus – Thessaloniki Museum of Photography

Stratos Kalafatis was born in Kavala in 1966. He lives in Thessaloniki where he photographs, teaches and organizes activities related to creative photography. He has completed long-term photo projects such as Archetypal Images, Calendar 1998-2002, the Saga, Archipelago, Athos – The colors of faith. The following books are published by Agra: Archetypal Images (1999), Omonia 2000 – Journey to the navel of Athens (the author Philip Philip – 2000) Calendar 1998 -2002 (with foreword by Christian Caujolle – 2004), Athos – The Colors Faith (with a foreword by Nikos Xidakis – 2014).