She was pop, that's why he killed her, 2002
Born in Ioannina in 1966; studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Demosthenis Kokkinidis. Since 2004, he has been teaching at the Department of Sculpture and Art Sciences, School of Fine Arts, University of Ioannina, where he became assistant professor in 2010. He has held many solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions in Greece and other countries. He has worked as a set and costume designer for cinema and theatre. His works can be found in public and private collections.
"She was pop, that's why he killed her", is the humoristic pictorial comment made by Christos Charisis on the legend of Kyra Frosyni of Yiannena. Utilizing with crystal-clear clarity the morphological and conceptual elements of American Pop Art from the Fifties and Sixties, he has created an utterly charming work, borrowing features of that art which he has then transformed into a personal form of expression.
Above all else, the work is based on the ready-made, done in accordance with the exhortations fo the great innovator of 20th century art, Marcel Duchamp. An actual plastic tablecloth, with a flower desigh on top, orange flowers and green leaves and dark blue on the bottom, is illuminated like the lake at Yiannena. On this base, like a stroke of a pen-and at a distance of several of several centimeters above the canvas- a naked female body has been placed in a way that the head, up to the neck, is submerged under the water. It resembles an effortless brushstroke, though it is constructed of painted cork.
The Epirot Charisis has set himself to playing with the history of art, winking at us through allusions to various artisti and stages. The female figure embodied among the flowers is like something from a painting by Gustav Klimt, while the female nude is reminiscent of works by Egon Schiele.
Τhe work was created for the exhibition 'Sketching out Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday. Young Greek Artists: A tribute to Prefecture of Yiannena".' held at the Averoff Museum of Modern art, at Metsovo in 2002.
