Peter Weiermair
About man and animal
On the new works of Dimitris Yeros
Dimitris Yeros is an artist who is well up in two medial fields, Photography as well as Painting. A study of his painting shows clearly his origins in Surrealism and its poetical alienating strategies; in photography, especially in his last series, he demonstrates in an almost empty, only elementarily furnished scene, that he is a disciple of Lautréamont, who pursued the union of contrary objects, namely of a sewing-machine and an umbrella, on the dissecting table.
The union of man and animal has a long tradition in Surrealism. The confrontation of the animal, that fascinated the surrealists with its brutish sensuality and identity of instinct, is easy to trail in Painting from S. Dali, F.Labisse , P. Roy, down to the Austrian M. Lassnig. I don't know anyone in the field of Photography, who unites both life forms in such an innovative and fascinating way in a surrealistic picture-book world.
In the first place there is by Yeros the confrontation of the static nude with the animal and, consequently, the reflection of the categories naked/dressed, natural/artificial as well as of the terms: rationality and instinct, beauty and sensuality. The second group deals with pictures that might be understood almost as a paraphrase of Alfred Hitchcock's Birds. What composes this attraction for butterflies and snails, that emanates from the surprised, naked, even subdued victims? The animals face man in a diverse form and function. At one time almost emblematically as if in a children's book (animal/man), then again in a poetical/narrative manner in a sense of standardization of man, where the animal is humanized or a certain animal determines a certain type of man. But moreover there is this type of picture that stresses the weird and menacing animal side with the black humour of Surrealism.
Wherever, of course, a contact of animal and man takes place - the ethereal touch of the butterfly or the slime trace of the snail - the erotic and sensual moment plays metaphorically a part too.
Yeros operates with associations and analogies. In his new photographs the artist dwells in a field that underlines his inclination to fabulous poetry.
Peter Weiermair
Former director of the Frankfurt Kunstverein, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Bologna, and Museum of modern and contemporary Art, Salzburg.
