“Intermedia Dialogues: Morfy Gikas, Aleko Syntelis, Jong Rim Song” at Paris Koh Fine Art (Ft. Lee, New Jersey)

Jong Rim Song, Landscape Composition,, 24x18 inch, acrylic painting on wood panel, 2024

By JONATHAN GOODMAN July 19, 2024

Although the three artists in this strong show come from all over the world –Morty Gikas is from Crete, Alex Syntelis is from America, and Jong Rim Song is from Korea– they all are driven by non-objective thinking, in which lines and volumes and colors take precedent over the figurative meaning of what we see. Curator Thalia Vrachopoulos, who is based in New York, but who is especially active as a curator of Korean and Greek contemporary art, has brought together three highly skilled artists, whose efforts result in a dialogue, across cultures, on how abstract art has become an international idiom –one committed to the geographical ties that happen inevitably when working within this kind of style, even though the art of each of the three is stylistically far apart. The abstractions put out by this small group could not be more different. Gikas makes beautiful two and three-dimensional work resembling a classically modern idiom –her two plaster sculptures, one ball-shaped and flanked on either side by a painted wall-like plinth (the work is relatively small), along with a larger sphere bearing cuts of some depth into the overall shape of the work, creating thin divisions of material and also the space separating one cut from the next, are excellent.

Then, the striped components of Song’s paintings, oriented in more than a few directions, look a lot like a crazy-quilt version of a Jasper Johns painting using a similar visual style. The different colors of the patches backing the black stripes make the works visually eclectic, driven by an exciting sense of contrast. This work, too, is entirely non-objective, being oriented not so much in a single direction as in many angles at once. The consequences are compelling. Finally, the highly linear drawings of Syntelis look like the imagery has been cut by a laser. They are flat works of art, but pictures of the imagery can suggest low relief –as if the thicker black lines were protruding from the surface, although in fact they are not. This is work whose emotional content is constrained, being oriented toward design as much as fine art. Because the determination of the forms is linear, the abstraction looks more cerebral, less emotional than we would likely experience with organic shapes.

Morfy Gikas, Light and Darkness series, 2023, Acrylic, Oil pigment and pencils on paper, 22x30 in.

Vrachopoulos, a highly experienced curator, has turned the three artists’ works into a conversation about how different kinds of abstraction do not have to closely link in a formal sense –even as they generate a language that belongs to the general category of non-figurative art. We are so used to abstraction in art –practiced for more than a hundred years at this point– we take the idiom for granted. Individual differences result from the personal idiosyncrasies of the artist. So the works reflect the individual considerations of people who may be proceeding according to their own terms.

The classicism involved in Gikas’s art stems from an organic abstraction that has been practiced for a while. Her simple forms radiate a centered understanding of shapes that communicate a deep-set beauty in their particular fashion. Song looks to more contemporary influences; the style incorporates a vibrant immediacy resulting from shifts in shape, color, direction. And Syntelis’ hard-edge vision is linked, in subtle ways, to design, perhaps even architecture.

These artists are all searching for a language that would express a vision in recently determined art historical language. We take such an idiom for granted, although the change from one artist’s work to the other in this show argues for an individualization leading to styles at a considerable distance from each other. Even since the 1970s, we have been living in an era of pluralism, and this show reflects differences between the artists quite sharply. Difference is sought out today as a kind of flag for personal presence, but it is the art, not the person, that counts. “Intermedia Dialogues,” with its emphasis on visual alteration within a generally non-objective style, looks like a determined effort to make that point. WM