A circus elephant and a ballerina, a bear and a gymnast, are ironically and elegantly frozen in a moment of time in the photographs of Gregori Maiofis; frozen in a very vague gap between the past and the present, which leads into the labyrinth of consciousness through a Soviet childhood and classics of world literature.
Maiofis transfers the photograph to canvas, applying halftones in oils, leaving an outlet for reality only in form, since the content has become completely stranded in a surrealistic, Dadaistic space of the absurd and grotesque.
The photographer and painter, as a sensitive choreographer places models in whimsical positions and laconic compositions, conducts the orchestra of images to the music of proverbs and idioms. The three-pronged representation of artist-model, artist-philosopher, and artist-esthete appears in the series “Artist and Model,” where the emphasis and meanings depend on the points and angles of view that we use for viewing the world. Exhibition #3, collected from various series of different years and varying themes, presents a retrospective of Gregori Maiofis with a museum feel to it.