Solo exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries
Athens

Kalfayan Galleries, 11 Haritos Street 106 75 Kolonaki Athens, Greece

https://kalfayangalleries.com/exhibition-off-season/

The exhibition Off Season by Angelos Merges consists of large and medium scale paintings. This series of works is based on memories, from the artist's personal experiences and the changing living conditions on the island of Chios, where he grew up. It focuses, as the title Off Season suggests, on seemingly indifferent and in-between situations. Off season is stereotypically the time when it feels as if nothing is happening on the islands which are associated with tourism. But in reality things are different. In winter, residents live an isolated life full of difficult and demanding tasks, preparing for the next touristic season, often coexisting with war and poverty stricken refugees. It is precisely this contradictory reality of the islands of the East Aegean that Angelos Merges’s anthropocentric painting has as its point of reference. He paints human figures, rendered abstractly, like shadows, in situations with an open narrative and ambiguous scenarios. Are they bathers enjoying the sea or refugees harassed by the same sea? Are they having fun or are they threatened?
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The common experience of the screen culture is passed on to Merges's painting through specific colours. These are synthetic, saturated ones that do not exist in nature and are in contrast with the duller or earthy tones often associated in the past with the 'serious' painting. At the same time, the constant exposure of today's people -again through screens- to an unmanageable volume of information, mainly in the form of images, competes with the reception of all kinds of images including works of art. Merges’s use of abstraction -supported by an open narrative structure- achieves to capture, with minimum information and intense colour, the gaze within such a competitive reality. 
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Eleni Koukou
Art Historian - Curator