Page 39 - EMPIRIA 2025

JOYFUL EXPLORATION I SANTORINI

Thirty-four years IN THE HEART of Santorini’s village of Mesaria,
after MATI Fira, an old 1900s winery has been reborn—not as
Yorgos Kypris
creates a new just another gallery, but as a living, breathing
point of reference space for thought. MATI Art Observatory, as
in Santorini. With it’s aptly named, is where history, landscape,
MATI Mesaria, he
offers a space and contemporary art fold into each other. And
for observation, it’s here that artist Yorgos Kypris finds fertile
reflection, and ground—literally and metaphorically—for his latest
quiet resistance—an
artistic tribute to reflections on humanity, memory, and nature. “I
the island’s beauty don’t believe anything in life is born in a vacuum,”
and its need for Kypris says. “We’re all shaped by what surrounds
balance.
us—what moves us, provokes us, changes us. For
me, the Dada movement gave me the freedom to
think and act independently. The Surrealists also
interested me—especially Magritte, more so than
Dalí. Later on, it was Arte Povera, particularly
through the work of Jannis Kounellis, that left a
deep impression.” These influences, however,
were only the beginning of a personal language
Echo Fields work. Since the early 1990s, his artistic focus has
that Kypris has cultivated across decades of
increasingly turned toward environmental themes—
well before climate change became a buzzword.
Sculptor Yorgos Kypris transforms “That’s when I began working on ecology,” he
says. “I was drawn to coastal environments, to
the land itself into a resonating the sea itself—which I’d come to love through
years of diving. I started creating works around
surface—where memory, myth, and these marine ecosystems. I’m still wrestling with
material echo through steel, soil, them today.”
Born in Cyprus in 1954, Kypris has long walked
and silence, inside the contemplative the line between sculpture, installation, and
existential critique. His thematic core finds fresh
landscape of MATI Mesaria. soil at MATI Mesaria. Set amid restored gardens
and centuries-old stonework, the space invites

YIANNIS BOURNIAS

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