CN: TheC2007beho MT: mixed media: China ink, gouache and India ink on touch paper on canvas (130x100) TX: signed with felt pen at rear upper right in Greek , inscribed IL: Megakles Rogakos 2008, #238 CT: Ekfrasi - Yianna Grammatopoulou, Athens - 2007 LC: Office of Junior College & General Studies Program CM: Portraiture has concerned Theofilis from his first encounter with art. Already in 1980 he began to reproduce (by mixing photography with painting) dolls, originally their severed heads, and then other of their parts in macabre conditions. Dolls for Theofilis are a substitute of the human presence. Through them he aimed to refer to the feeling of the loss of innocence. He was particularly interested to exhibit the fact that dolls as toy are brought forth - as is the case with living beings - from a mould. The heads he created were called Beholders wishing to make the point "they are beholders observing beholders". Theofilis' present Beholder began as an homage to Malevich. Following his instinct, this work developed from abstract composition to the rectangular figuration of a man, to whom Theofilis refers as a "mafioso during prohibitionism". As if by chance came the tie, which on the one hand rests directly - owing to the shirt's absence - on the Beholder's bare chest, serving as sole protection of his sensitive heart, and on the other - if it turns - may become a gullet, emblematic of the social conventions that overwhelm people. As known, the tie has been used by self-murderers as an immediately accessible means of suicide, especially in cases of amorous despair. The same tie may insinuate the Beholder's firm decisiveness to revenge an amorous injustice. The carpet of flowers on this macabre tie refers to the beauty experienced by the Beholder in the past. The background next to the border that frames the Beholder presents a blinding light in the form of fiery tongues, which have the capacity as much to destroy as to purify. [Megakles Rogakos 08/2007] BIBLIOGRAPHY: ROGAKOS, MEGAKLES Silent Dialogues: Multimedia Portraits Throughout Time 2008 The American College of Greece - ACG Art, Athens