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ANGELOS DELIVORRIAS The poetic dimension of matter in the work of Natalia Mela

THE ATTEMPT TO SEEK OUT and explore the genetic code of art works can to an extent be based on measurable parameters, if the effort focuses on the self-sufficiency and autonomy of artistic creation. That is, if it focuses on parameters related mainly to the quality of the individual composition. This means that it is essential to discover the relation that governs the artist's inner need to express the external stimuli they encounter and its cause; to trace the processes that co-ordinate the conscious and the unconscious components of a work's individual characteristics, which are as much the contents of the composition as they are the composition of the contents. Again, without completely escaping the danger of excessive subjectivity, such an interpretative mood is more productive, if I might say so, and also more educational, in following the social workings of the creative event.

Concerning the semantic impact of the concepts, and the questions raised by Natalia Mela's last exhibition and having sidestepped a very complex and exacting series of thoughts, I would like to define sculpture as the poetic expression of material. In other words, it is like a psychic breath, which may be innate in the soil and in plaster, in layers of stone and in metals and in many other organic materials, even in scientifically produced synthetic materials. In order for this poetic dimension to become perceptible, it requires the catalytic act of an exceptional notional and emotional intervention together with the matchless combination of strength and tenderness that only the caress of a human hand can guarantee.

I am talking about an art whose days are probably numbered. We are seeing an increase in exhibitions showing work that is taking other directions, towards constructions and their surroundings, and towards a disproportionately theoretical approach to what are very anthropocentric notions of the world. Sometimes, this new trend in art has an excessively symbolic concept of the world with an unbearably legible scrutiny of its components and an intensified tendency to abstractly strip the semantic core of situations of their inherent morphology and is dominated by a cool approach to shapes seen from the viewpoint of a satiated but tired psyche.

We must, however, emphasise the essential contribution of sculpture to the precious stock of experience of expression; there has always existed something completely different from the agonized search for originality in composition. That takes us back to our original departure point: the presupposition of the balance of volume required for a structure to have static sufficiency, the harmonization of surfaces, the outlines to ensure the plastic unity of the whole and the kinetic animation of some of the components with the play of light. This is something more than a notional type of construction whose basic components are ephemeral or random, with the dominance of geometry or mathematics playing a decisive part in the ontological tug-of-war between being and seeming. Sculpture has always been, and always will be, mankind's practical answer to creation as it is sensed.

The strength and tenderness of the human hand, which I mentioned before, reminds me of something that Dimitris Pikionis, on seeing Natalia Mela years ago, noted: «It is as if she is totally immersed in the feeling of humble iron and in everything the blacksmith forges», and he heard her whispering, «Inside, I feel like a gypsy, or something like that». As the great teacher said, «her words were like the vivid, symbolic equation of her depth of feeling, her mystical effusion that seizes control of people, of all living things ... her 'burning heart for all creation, for all mankind, for birds, animals and demons and, always, for all things created'. Yes, I contemplated the fire and the furnace, the anvil and the hammer of the lame god whom I think of as myself, the treads of work and 'the fragrant tree bark', the inherited footprints of the masses, the frames and the skeletons of the boats, the helms and the oars... What am I saying? The furnace of the senses nestles in all creation, all mankind, all the living and all those without souls». Pikionis concludes his text by asking for the understanding of the reader for his clumsy attempt to interpret, using his limited powers, «the artist's brief confidences». Something he did manage, as he notes, was to show «what an effusion of feeling and how imagination characterises her work. Deep down, nothing else matters for this artist but to express: 'I want to be united and I want to unite', like the ancient, Dionysian dancer».

The distillation of stimuli that prompts the work of Mela is not confined to feeling and imagination. In her group of small statues - either from the marvellous world of the animal kingdom or from the still more marvellous world of man - everyone enjoys the inventiveness that animates the transformation of creatures into archetypal beings. One enjoys the magical shaping that transforms impressions and experiences of one thing into the visual truths of another order. The procedure is, either, one of enriching familiar images by the use of addition and the intense processing of certain determining characteristics or abstract, simple, without excess, condensing facts to acquire an imagined but valid form.

It is a secret, holy rite, at different stages of which both the impression of our daily routine and the fixations of historical memory are transformed with generous plasticity and a cool freshness. With evident respect for previous attempts at sculptural expression, the sculptures of Natalia Mela continue the epic tradition noted in the works of Chalepas, Tombros, Apartis, Pappas, Kapralos and Makris. They continue it with an-unshakeable faith in the inexhaustible possibilities of representational perfection, with a stubborn if not challenging indifference towards the tempting solutions of the new era, with all its transparent abandonment of the rules that govern traditional concepts. This often bridges the somewhat paradoxical gap that separates sculpture from painting and not only that.

The reconciliatory mood guides its inspirations and balances the contrary currents of emotional expression and cold intellectual reckoning; it is a fleeting spirit and an expressive restraint, memories of a life intensely lived and the fantastic vision hoped for, the youthfulness of moments that are etched in our consciousness, the maturity obtained from the tensions of being set free. Her forms are like something that soothes the soul, they seem like fairy tales, as if they have gained substance from those old narratives, the stories grandmothers told and the heroic feats in the folk-stories that filled our youths full of feeling. This certainly applies to St George and the Dragon, which is something more than the clever, well-balanced composition of volumes, a comprehensively studied group of lines and planes. The form of St George, coming from on high, 'flying' on his horse between the sky and the earth, recalls the heroic dimension of the rebellious mood of the Greeks, the crystallisation that resulted from centuries under Turkish rule and the enlivening intervention of the Orthodox Church as the guarantor of the victory of good. Inside the somewhat geometric, cube-like organization of its components, we see projected the model of manliness, spiritual, bodily and ethical power that the suffering Greeks have always dreamed of. Without sentimentality and without folkloric pangs of remorse, this work of art makes a bitter but rational comment with its obvious digs at the durability of symbols today.

I would say the same applies to an even greater degree to the memorial composition of Cecrops, where the creation of myths in the heavenly co-ordinates of inspiration over-rides the holiness of the Athenian past. The shape of the earthly hero who allowed the Athenians to be proud of their Attic origins emerges from the Attic soil with his swirling, coiling snake's tail, like something from the well known representations of classical antiquity. In contrast to the Kodros Painter's superb portrayal of the same form on his famous kylix in Berlin, and in contrast to the Cecrops on the Kassel Krater, Natalia Mela envisions the shining maturity of a handsome, strong man who holds the spear and the shield, referring conceptually to the guaranteed protection of his native land. The expressive character and the strength of his facial features, the imagined accentuation of his muscles, the magical play of light and shade on the scaled section of the body leave not a margin of doubt about the symbolic aim of its creator. Nor is there any doubt about the range of the work's symbolic aims which mobilise the mechanics of coherent conversion from past to present struggles to protect this land.

The paths of inspiration must have followed the same trail that leads to the composition of St George. Here the monumental scale and the control of real space and of tangible, historic time are palpable. The surface of the heroic form is like a soothing response to unacknowledged convictions that are secreted in the depths of our consciousness. By creating myths of the Greek past, the work of Natalia Mela projects the realization of something promising, just as a lighthouse emits light in the storm of difficult times, projecting encouragement, enlivenment, optimism.

Angelos Delivorrias

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