SANTORINI

Speech by art historian Athina Schina at the opening of the Efthymios Warlamis Exhibition at the Hellenic American Union on Santorini on June 20, 2011. Makis Warlamis or Efthymi Warlamis is known to many people for his architectural and design work, but above all, beyond being a painter, sculptor, designer and architect, Makis Warlamis is a visionary. He was born in Veria, but the place he loved very much, not just as his second homeland, but I can say even more than his first, is Santorini. For many years now, he has not only been talking about Santorini, but as you have heard, he has done many studies, seminars at an international level, he has studied, researched the place, the history, the traditions, the geophysical morphology, even this mysterious atmosphere, I would say the surreal character, that inspires this island. He started by studying every corner of this island and found, as we have seen in various of his works and in many of his designs, that Santorini consists of a polycentric system that circumvents the Renaissance perspective. He wanted, through this polycentric system, to pass on experiences, sensations, smells, aromas, experiences of all classes and ages, of the people who passed by and every step that crossed the small alleys of this island and its small findings facing the sea and a clear blue sky. Because indeed this island, due to its geomorphology, inspires this relationship of the vertical and horizontal axis. It is the individual and the universe, it is the part and the whole, it is all the ages of man together and none of them are isolated, which is why in his works he always forms small designs as hybrid formations, so to speak, so that they all function together like a huge puzzle that can be assembled, developed, rearranged, modified internally, but always being Santorini, its hidden and obvious sides, through the ways that Warlamis himself discovered it. He discovered its underground passages, he discovered its folk architecture, he discovered its smaller churches and its streets, the scaffolding, the pebbles, the soil of Santorini, the smell that the wild flowers bring and above all he discovered this sky and the depth of the sea, what makes people float in time. He always talks about these experiences, he always tries to redesign and give a way to approach through a multicultural perception and a timeless contemplation this island that is an island important for the whole world, unique in its values and unrepeatable. So he tried to give by observing his senses, observing the small journeys that the snail makes, the small steps of a small child, his crawling, to every step of the lonely person or the person with companionship. In these works, Makis Warlamis has created a Santorini, wondering how one can more authentically render this multidimensional character through which all the senses and all the eras of the individual pass, and he decided that neither realism, nor metaphysics, nor impressionism, nor any of the post-war trends in art, can render this island that is like a mosaic. It is a polymorphic island and a polytonal island, we might say. Therefore, through what Warlamis himself understands, he gave works that capture the angles, the suspension, the ways in which one can see from below with the eye of the so-called frog or from above with the eye of the eagle, as the older masters used to say, the sea, the clouds, the shining sun, the reflections that take place on this island that maintains its transparency and all its mysterious character, giving us the feeling that we are writing and rewriting the history of our ancestors and our own history, on this very old and always new island. Therefore, he gave different aspects through different stimuli and in various ways, trying to transmit this mosaic of Santorini, this enigma and the question that is this island of the Archipelago. You will see the exhibition and you will feel with what coolness and with what joy, like a small child, he perceives the colors, climbs its rocks, discovers its caves, tries to connect the vertical with the diagonal axis and all these curves that Makis Warlamis calls erotic curves, wrapping them with this mist of mystery. Santorini is something unsolved for Makis. I believe that despite the seminars he has done at an international level and despite his many projects, he does not exhaust this island. Rather, through this set of his works he conveys to us his longing for Santorini, which is still unknown to him, while he knows it better, I can say, from his hometown of Veria.