People pass through our lives in different ways. Sotiris Moldovanos turns those encounters into paintings shaped by colour, clothing, gesture and shifting identity.
In In Order of Appearance, Sotiris Moldovanos considers the people who enter, leave and remain within our personal histories. Some encounters are brief, others stretch across years, but each contributes something to the way we understand ourselves and the world around us.
The exhibition continues Moldovanos’s distinctive approach to figurative painting. Bodies are carefully structured and anatomically recognisable, then fragmented into blocks of colour, geometric pattern and simplified silhouettes. Figures move between clarity and abstraction, creating a visual tension between the person we think we recognise and the painted surface itself.
Faces are largely withheld. Thick applications of paint replace individual features, allowing posture, clothing, colour and composition to carry much of the work’s meaning. This anonymity gives the figures a broader character and shifts attention away from portrait likeness towards the ways identity is constructed and perceived.
Clothing plays an important role throughout the exhibition. What a person wears can communicate confidence, personality, cultural affiliation or belonging before a word is spoken. Moldovanos uses these visual signals as part of a wider investigation into identity within a culture increasingly shaped by images and outward presentation.
The resulting paintings remain open to interpretation. Pattern interrupts the body, colour changes its weight and familiar human forms slip towards abstraction. Each figure becomes both an individual presence and a surface onto which viewers can project their own associations and memories.
Born in Johannesburg in 1977 and now based in Cape Town, Moldovanos graduated from Tshwane University of Technology in 1999. His practice centres on portraiture and figurative painting, with bold colour, geometric pattern and optical effects forming recurring elements of his visual language. In Order of Appearance is his sixth solo exhibition.
Images courtesy of Sotiris Moldovanos and WORLDART Gallery
