Frangiskos Dukakis unfolded his vision of the Hydra in a universal, soulful, symbolic, deeply moving way. He comes to Hydra, which he knows well as a place and attributes to it almost metaphysical and spiritual qualities, long before organizing a solo exhibition, which he presents this summer. He came in the pink light of dawn, in the blue of dusk, he studied volumes, shadows, kaleidoscopic light. He cultivated relationships that deepened and demanded release.

In front of his works in the Historical Archive – Hydra Museum, where the exhibition will be open until August 31, one can feel the silent splashes of this kind of embrace. The exhibition of Frangiskos Dukakis entitled “My Hydra”, curated by Iris Kritikou, is the epitome of identification with the idea and spirit of this place. However, above all, it is a majestic and at the same time modest picture, the result of osmosis and silkscreen printing.

Frangiskos Dukakis has matured as an excellent landscape painter and colorist. A student of Panagiotis Thetsis, he walks with a quiet voice, with energetic rhythms and with seductive obsessions, such as a debilitating connection with a place, to the point of conquest, reification and evaporation. In the previous cycle of his work on Valia Kalda, Francis Dukakis again spent time and thought on understanding the place, light, volumes. As the art historian and exhibition curator Iris Kritikou writes, “…the painting and the mental liberation of Valia Kalda must have preceded the Hydra to exist like this, now.”

The exhibition is on display until the end of August at the Hydra Historical Archive Museum and unobtrusively speaks to the long artistic tradition of the island.

And this timeless “now” gives us Hydra in the absolute light of spirituality, with underground movements, invisible and silent, in a color palette that follows the path of the sun, with pink and orange, with blue and ocher. Hydra Frangiskos Dukakis crosses in an imperceptible gust of wind and is washed away with an ironic, demanding, persistent, erotic look.

This Hydra is the primal, indomitable, desirable and invulnerable Hydra. It is a place outside of geographic coordinates, defined by the desire to paint, subtly talking to the long artistic tradition of the island, with artists who wanted to capture its light. Like Panagiotis Thetsis who looked at the houses and rocks from the roof of the Hydra Museum, Frangiskos Dukakis takes this view of this cultural heritage as his starting point. The scene with Tetsis drawing the Hydra from the Hydra Museum was shared by Dina Adamopoulou, head of the State Archives, Hydra Historical Archive-Museum, who calls it the Master’s “open studio” in the catalogue.

There is an aura of holiness emanating from the work of Francis Dukakis. Painstaking painting, with the expenditure of time and effort, the Hydra becomes a ship in infinity, beyond which it is necessary to go. The intensity of spirituality over color is vividly described by Iris Kritik with the words: “Gray rocks, sea water and red soils, ash-green glades and white vertical volumes, rough outlines of prickly pear and red cypress trees, lighthouses, night lampposts and piers. , small monasteries and mills, purple clouds and milky domes, rising morning and setting sun…”.

I find that the road that connects Frangiskos Dukakis’ Hydra with the mental, emotional and artistic make-up of this place is moving. Layers and layers of glimpses, inscriptions, breaths, thoughts, porous palimpsests and hybrid crossings. If you put it all together, you get the primary project. Establishing a view of the archetypal place. The poet Dimitris Angelis, one of the most important voices of the intellectuals of the time, also writes in the catalog and notes that in Frangiskos Dukakis’ Hydra “we look at landscapes of extraordinary beauty, some darker with a captivating interior, others bright at sunrise or sunset, who present us with an island dismantled into its elements, an introverted Hydra that sees itself.” Frangiskos Dukakis is maturing creatively and becoming more and more interior-oriented.