Optasia - The Ancient Treasures

A palimpsest of forms and emotions.

OPTASIA is the new body of work by Giuliano Bekor, the internationally acclaimed photographer, perpetually in love with Greece and Greek culture. On show for the first time, the collection was a part of the Life Art Festival 2018 in Greece. It was an ideal opportunity for the photographer to create artworks inspired by emblematic ancient treasures: Cycladic art, Black-figured and Geometric amphorae, Classical sculpture and Hellenistic mosaics.

Los Angeles and New York based, Giuliano Bekor, a veteran in fashion and celebrity photography, has long been passionate with the same beauty that inspired Ancient Greek art: that of the human figure. In his artistic works, he creates large-scale photographs where he envelops his models in a second skin made of art inspired forms, which go beyond the aesthetics of the image by challenging omnipresent issues such as the masculine and the heroic. The figures – masterly composed, without any digital manipulation, and dramatically lit against dark backgrounds - are hence given a highly painterly quality.

In OPTASIA, the naked female body becomes the canvas on which the artist creates his own idiosyncratic archeology: a palimpsest of forms and emotions, at times dark and other times luminous, like human history and life itself. The outcome of pairing Ancient Greek motifs with the naked bodies, especially through the prism of a crosscultural body adornment tradition, is a transcend- ing vision of imaginary goddesses. OPTASIA is indeed a beautiful vision.

OP1

Inspired by the Charioteer of Delphi, one of the finest examples of ancient bronze sculptures, 470 BC, Delphi Archaeological Museum, and the Paphos Mosaics, the House of Dionysos, Roman period 2nd century AD, Paphos, Cyprus.

OP2

Inspired by a Corinthian mosaic floor from a Roman villa decorated with a medal, bearing the head of Dionysos, the god of wine, theatre and religious ecstasy, 2nd century AD.

OP3

Inspired by a section of the torso of a Cycladic female figurine from the Museum of Cycladic Art. Cycladic culture, a starting point of Ancient Greek civilization, was also the stimulus for OPTASIA artwork.

OP4

Inspired by the Paphos Mosaics, the House of Dionysos, a Roman villa, Roman period 2nd century AD, Paphos Archeological Park, Cyprus.

OP6

Inspired by the Mosaic of a panther from the House of Masks, 1st century BC, Mu- seum of Delos. The island of Delos was the birth place of Apollo.

OP14

Inspired by an amphora from the Geometric Era, a seminal period in pottery making, 750 BC. The amphora depicts a religious procession among the rows of geometric patterns.

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