WHATEVER REMAINS, TURN IT INTO ART! by Sergis Hadjiadamaos
Almyra Hotel, Paphos
22-29 November. Opening 7.30pm
Enquiries - Almyra Hotel - 26 888700
Consistent with the pattern of titles he chooses for his solo exhibitions and his artworks, the artist Sergis Hadjiadamos, in his current solo show at ALMYRA HOTEL in Paphos, chose a revealing title, with which he simultaneously addresses an exhortation to his audience, saying that “Whatever Remains, Turn It Into Art”.
The title implies the dialogue that the artist needs with the audience, to convey the message that this reality, which we are living in today on a global level, and is generally acknowledged to be now experienced as cynical, polemical, unimaginably fluid but at the same time as a period of significant historical changes, individually and collectively, needs immediate attention and improvement. The artist’s proposal encourages us to make whatever improvements we choose, envisioning through the experience of Art how our world will transform into a more sustainable being by applying best practices.
A key characteristic of Art as a creative process is the dissemination of new experiences over time through the transformation of reality with the ultimate goal of improving it. Art is a transformative spiritual force of man in the World, which is embodied in the works of art of artists for the World itself. It often functions as that traffic light that informs us of the dangers that are present in our lives, which need to be addressed by all of us, and hopefully suggests aesthetic solutions and ways of overcoming these dangers.
Sergis Hadjiadamos, of South African and Cypriot descent, is the son of the renowned Cypriot sculptor Andys Hadjiadamos, who first introduced the Surrealist movement to the island, both through his sculpture and his literary work. It is natural, then, that Art flows in his veins, having been nurtured in its environment since he was born, as his defining references are based on and originate from the radical values of the Surrealist movement, which he achieves but surpasses throughout his artistic career, especially in his digital artworks and installations, leading us and at the same time taking us on a journey as their viewers, from Pointillism to various other important Art movements of the 20th century, up to Pop Art.
The artist Sergis Hadjiadamos, defined from a very early age the beauty hidden in surrealist compositions, the messages transmitted in a humorous and parabolic way in them, and their historicity. With his subsequent immersion in and research into the values and qualities of Art, as well as exhaustively studying the History of Art, he delves into many other aesthetic movements of the past century, moving from technology and its applications to the Art of the present and the 21st century, demonstrating the definition of “Contemporary” in his works, as a multitasking endeavor. He symbolically uses and often incorporates in the narratives of his depictions, in his personal artistic vocabulary, the qualities and properties of these embedded aesthetic & artistic Art movements, as outlets for compositions and layers of materiality (textures), guided by morpho plastic and conceptual research, historical research, documents, tradition and the open dialogue he engages with it, trying to constantly and endlessly expand his artistic means and their impact on us. He achieves this by using and applying in his visual composition’s modern narrative methodologies, such as storytelling which he has been working on until recently. This is why I consider Sergis Hadjiadamos primarily a post-conceptual digital artist more than anything else.
Sergis, following in a sense the example of his father, is the new contemporary pioneering visual artist of Cyprus, who is the first to introduce into the visual art scene of the island artworks resulting from the digital processing of a damaged historical archival photographic material, from the glass surfaces of its negatives (the photographic archive of Spyros Charitou, 1901-1991). In a successful attempt to digitally embellish and sensitize the conceptual content of this private photographic archive, now useless for any other use. With this approach, he rescues selected parts of the archive, recreating for it a new history, a new different life, and a new collective memory, from the personal memory “wounded” by time and hardship that was offered to him. Precisely for this reason, I classify him as a post-conceptual visual artist. He creates works of art with all the possible digital techniques of the present, he re-directs and recreates with his material the “loss” and its treatment, a fact that represents the contemporary history and the experience of this island and its people. He manages with theatricality, innovation, and a visual approach, the contemporary history from the personal damaged photographic records of Spyros Charitos, with the mediation of technology, to transcend it and show us a best practice example of how we can also transcend it in our turn.
It is no coincidence that his specific solo exhibition entitled: “Whatever Remains, Turn It Into Art” at Almyra Hotel, is dedicated by him to his father’s close friend, the well-known photographer - photojournalist Michalakis Charitou (1935-2025), son of Spyros Charitou, who entrusted him with this archive and gave him the opportunity to use it.
The transformative power of Art often constitutes the axis of the mystery of the artist’s narrative, something we also observe in the work of Sergis Hadjiadamos, especially in the present visual creations that he exhibits at Almyra Hotel.
It is a rare event in the field of Art for an artist to engage with and create works from damaged glass photographic plates (the so-called photographic negatives) which even date back up to a century. The fact that this particular archive found a digital artist to exploit it in a consistently inventive and exploratory way is also extremely unusual internationally. And especially in Cyprus, where it is certainly happening for the first time!
Finally, I must mention that Sergis Hadjiadamos in 2022, held the first exhibition in the Republic of Cyprus in which he showcased digital NFTs artworks of his. While, in 2003, he held the first completely digital exhibition in Cyprus with digitally printed artworks.
In conclusion, I would like to refer to the painstaking and persistent creative process of the artist Sergis Hadjiadamos, which is not limited only to the traditional approach to visual practices and the constant manual work and digital processing. But it also includes as an integral part of it, mentoring programs of his choosing, which he attended under the guidance of Israeli professor Mauris Kahn. As well as, a thorough personal study to expand his visual narrative by eliminating sentimentality and burden when seeking inspiration from this archive. But mainly, by eliminating the historicity of the narratives that connect him to specific photographic impressions of Spyros Charitos that he discovered in his archive. The works he is exhibiting today prove to us that these processes justify him as he succeeded in ultimately focusing on aesthetics and their composition as a priority.
I am certain that from now on, Sergis Hadjiadamos will continue to be recognized and will continue to strengthen his dominant position, as he deserves, in the Contemporary Art History of Cyprus and will take the next steps with his works abroad, worthily representing our country and our Cultural Heritage.
