Download full text by Megakles Rogakos: "et in arcadia ego" (pdf)
... all of serrada’s forest photography reminds its viewers the everlasting mystery in nature. he brings to the present aspects of the lost garden of eden as it was inhabited by the ancient satyrs and centaurs and encountered by the medieval knights in search of the grail. in one group of photographs he presents actual pictures of thick and dense forests. these photographs are printed on mesh that allows light to seep from the rear, thus dissolving the picture. one feels that on these prints nature is at work and that old things dying give way to new life. serrada’s art is a reflection on nature’s composition - decomposition - recomposition, which reflects the life - death - rebirth cycle. the energy for the pictures’ transformation originates from beneath appearances, the dark premises of the roots, the fallen logs and dead leaves, which is the realm of the underworld. amidst the picture’s darkness one may see the new shoots of nature, light and life emerging...
... in another group of photographs serrada suggests something beyond the romantic view of nature. the observed decomposition is interiorized and taken on the level of new patterns: "nature reconstructed". paradoxically, technology facilitates serrada to reintroduce nature in art, which is something parallel to the act of creation. he digitally manipulates a photograph by recycling an endogenous pattern. the way he reproduces a pattern is not mechanical, but rather organical. there is a variation that follows a formula akin to nature. at first glance the viewer does not notice it. as soon as the repetition is noticed, the viewer begins to feel lost in the woods the nausic feeling of disorientation...
Megakles Rogakos
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