The painting of Raphael Baikas, with indescribable lyricism and charm, has the ability to travel the viewer of his work to places that seem to open a window to other times. He deifies the female form, a strong symbol in his work, while music is completely intertwined with his painting.
Looking at his works you think you are hearing sweet melodies. A painting with absolute harmony.
The painter Raphael Baikas in his studio.
These impressions were created during our visit to the Argo Gallery, where Raphael Baikas’ latest, seventh solo exhibition with the eloquent title “Companions in Memory” is being hosted, curated by Alexia K. Serezis. A painter who torments his work, who needs time to express what concerns him, an artist with a keen eye, in the positive sense, he welcomed us to his studio and made us fellow travelers in his painting wanderings.
What are you presenting in your new, latest, solo exhibition at Argo Gallery?
My latest work is the fruit of three periods 2010-12, 2019-21 and 2023-24. Thematically, the works revolve around the study and study of the female figure, either under the same ambient and lighting conditions or under the juxtaposition of landscape and random light.
How much does memory define your work, since the title of the exhibition is “Companions in memory”?
The word “memory” is generally the emotional approach of man to the inexorable passage of time. Naturally, it always consists of nostalgic and strongly emotional moments of our childhood. When you realize how far life has ahead of you and how far back especially in a time of spiritual barrenness, you owe it to yourself to give him the “food” he craves and which he can hardly find now. Each faded frame of happy childhood moments is a small treasure for a visual creator and an alibi that can also act as a lever to continue his work.
The artist’s obsessions are flame and brake, wish and curse
The woman has an important role in your work. Is the female form a symbol for you? What does it represent?
Besides the fact that the female form is generally considered the symbol of “beautiful”, for me it is something deeper: it is the center of our emotional sphere. It is memory, nostalgia, tension, tranquility, oblivion, abandonment, justification, life itself.
Do the musical instruments you often use represent time? What is the relationship of your painting and yours to time?
Music without time does not exist. Just imagine a percussion or other musical instrument, producing rhythm and notes respectively in a single instant, what would happen if time was frozen or did not exist… The same is true of our successive auditory stimuli, which decode music . Like the painter’s work, it comes from the fermentation of ideas in successive stages. The time value of the effect takes precedence over the chemistry between colors and design.
However, I would also like you to tell me what your relationship is with music and rhythm. You listen to music when you paint;
Of course, there is always music while painting and not only that. After all, music is the awe-inspiring rival of painting. One art complements the other and at the same time creates it. It expands it, feeds it. I can start a project from listening to music. The same is the other way around with a music composer who creates by seeing images – my biggest musical preference is soundtracks. Rhythm and melodic harmony identical to the design and color on the canvas respectively.
Are there obsessions in your painting and how do you manage them?
Every painter, every artist has obsessions. And when he is called upon to create, he often involuntarily enters periods of narcissism, morbid egotism, and depression. His obsessions are flame and brake, wish and curse. Then he is called upon to face them by gradually going back to find where he lost his way. And when he rediscovers his favorite mound, he finds his stride once more.
Do you think that obsessions maybe contribute to the creation of your personal style in your painting? Do they maybe even give a stamp?
All people are defined by obsessions. From a simple and quiet life to the most stormy one. Obsession is not only the morbid embodiment of the superego, it is phobia, weakness or cowardice. Our daily life, whether it is work or entertainment, communication or any manifestation of our life, is governed or derived from small or large obsessions, which have stamped in a legitimate and bland way the positions we ourselves have set for ourselves. It is the duty of the visual artist to strip them and expose them. The painter always depicts his own truth. His destiny…
Is painting a daily occupation? What is painting for you?
There isn’t a day and, especially, a night when I don’t paint for at least an hour. Painting and in general the creation related to it is my breath. Painting is a never-ending study. An acrobatics between the viewer and the subconscious. A path between painstaking observation and constant questioning.
The project “My time and my ally”
“The public returns in the galleries”
When did you realize that painting is your path?
Since I was a toddler, I drew or at least wrestled with a pencil. The years were spent in middle school and high school drawing my classmates and then the teachers. I was obsessed with anatomy and portraits, with a special love for industrial design. In the summer of 1984, I decided to try my luck by applying to the Academy of Fine Arts, when it was still at NTUA. I entered with the first and third. I guess that’s when I realized that’s where I belonged. With my teachers T. Patraskidis and P. Tetsis I spent the five most fruitful, creative and happy years that a student of the School of Fine Arts might spend.
What do you want to offer the public with your painting? Does this concern you when you paint?
I offer what I see in my own way. Just… Many times I don’t know how the public really sees my painting. After all, in the course of my work, he is not my expert. What really concerns me is how the pieces of the puzzle connect when, following a period of years spent in the studio painting, my works are reunited in one space, the art room, as is happening now with my exhibition at the Argo Gallery. Then the painter is literally exposed. During the exhibition, you have all the time to hear how people react to your work. It is very useful, beneficial and constructive.
Post-coronavirus, have audiences returned to galleries and art spaces?
The public is slowly coming back. It still needs time to get over him. There are many fears associated with the coronavirus and they have remained.
Do you have a plan, a dream for your painting?
Of course. I keep working lately trying to “look” with a more authentic look, without complicated thoughts and pretentious impositions of the “modern” lifestyle. This, beyond painting, I also need in my life.
Info
“COMPARANTS IN MEMORY”
Exhibition of paintings by Raphael Baikas
EDITOR: Alexia K. Serezis
DURATION: Until April 27
WHERE: Argo Gallery (Neofytou Douka 5, Kolonaki, tel. 2107249333, www.argo-gallery.gr)
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