General Entry - Emerging Talent Awards

As I studied the photographs taken by Fokion Zissiadis during his ten-day trip to Iceland this summer, it occurred to me, almost without prompting, that the force of these landscapes lies above all in the allegorical metaphors they evoke. In the very real magic of these extreme geophysical phenomena, and the stark contrasts of the Icelandic landscape, Zissiadis finds a mythical interpretation in which: ...velvet concavities form a geography of moulds, clouds take the form of steam from a locomotive, waterfalls flow like the beards of deities, the remains of ships or ‘ships of the air’ are transformed into alien monsters or biblical arks, moored like satellite dishes, earth and sky – solid and fluid – acquire the same material density, while the springs bubbling up from the entrails of the earth flow down into a sea of rocks ... Fokion Zissiadis’ landscapes seem to create their own legends, tales of battles between giants and titans, with what remains of these battles now as hard as stone, as precious stone! Thalea Stefanidou Art Historian and Critic - Curator