NEW ICONS

Like most Greeks, Yorgos was raised in two visual traditions: a Western one, where novelty was at a premium; and an Orthodox tradition, which valued conformity above everything. It’s an artistic challenge to reconcile these two and the New Icon Series are Yorgos’s answer to that. After a retreat on Mount Athos some years ago he realised that glass was the ideal medium for the purpose. Icons aren’t just images of holiness. They are holy, sometimes even acheiropoieton – made by saints, untouched by human hand. Icons have always been seen as windows between the human and divine worlds: glass is both transparent and capable of bearing an image, a revelation and a mystery. Abstraction – seeing reality in a non-realist way – is part of the iconic tradition. This is why icon-makers have never gone in for perspective, or for naturalistic portraiture.