He is one of Greece's most famed artists and photographers, with a trail of accolades dotting his incredible career. He has presented his works in 58 solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. He is one of the most influential Greek artists of his generation and one of the first Greek artists to present Performances, Body Art, Video Art, and Mail Art. This year, fans of Dimitris Yeros are in for an aesthetic smorgasbord as he prepares to present solo exhibitions showcasing his art and photography.
First, will be 30 works executed in Greece and America over the last 27 years. These are small and large aquarelles on paper characterised by a detailed realistic script. Unlike the monochrome works he exhibited in Athens three years ago which caused a stir, all the works are in colour as they are from earlier periods in his work.
Most feature his trademark little man, who is partly an alter ego of the surrealist artist himself, incessantly moving between the real and the metaphysical and relating the problems faced by contemporary man in an enigmatic critical spirit and with an awakening consciousness. At the same time the artist's ecological sensibility, in these as in his earlier works, remains strikingly prophetic. Hills, vast landscapes, birds, trees spermatozoa-like clouds, blots, and volcanoes coexist in order to produce what surrealists call a "Divine Trick".
The well-known American art critic Dominique Nahas writes in the exhibition catalogue Dimitris Yeros favors images that engage all of our senses. Such imagery, mediated by happenstance and reverie, is a poetic as well as a reconciling force. Through it, the artist comes to terms with the world by using an imaginative project that expands into personal and universal dimensions. Within his vision, the artist finds surprising poetic relationships between the subject and the content. In doing so, the practice of art for Yeros is a means and an end for self-renewal through self-revelation. For the viewer, the art of Dimitris Yeros could best be viewed as cultural gifts with long-lasting effects. Such art enriches this world by offering it a different, yet unique, vision of enchantment and contemplation.
Following this exhibition, Yeros will be presenting black and white photographs he shot in Lesvos over the last 35 years at the Throckmorton Fine Arts of New York between early June and late September. These photographs feature landscapes, scenes with people and nudes photographed at various spots around the island.
In November, Yeros will exhibit the black-and-white photographs he captured in Egypt twenty years ago at the Tintera Gallery in Cairo, and in December he will exhibit new paintings at the Kapatais Gallery in Nicosia.
Yeros has also been a prolific illustrator in many books and magazines throughout his long career. In 1987, UNICEF chose his work The Dangers of Curiosity to print on cards for international circulation. In 2010, Insight Editions-California published the book Shades of Love with photographs inspired by the poems of Constantine P. Cavafy with a foreword by Edward Albee and introduction by John Wood. The book is honoured by American Library Association and featured on their Top Ten list as one of the best books of the year.
Yeros's vast body of work can be found in many private and public collections in Greece and abroad including England, Japan, and Greece.
The exhibition at Eikastikos Kyklos DL will run from 6 March – 11 April 2020 and will be open on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 11.00 to 20.00, Wednesdays and Saturdays from 11.00 to 16.00.