In his nearly fotografic yet not fotorealistic painting, Aris Kalaitzis approaches his pictures just like film productions. Similar to a director he "casts" layman actors and arranges these at carefully chosen locations, according to his inner picture, which he usually allows to develop unhurriedly over months, even years.

To begin with it's the locations he comes across that he "hangs over his bed", captured in a first photography. Followed by others, within these, step by step composing his protoganists, trying out arrangements. Slowly, the "scripts" for his paintings develop. And it seems actually, as though he were making up films meant to exhaust themselves in a single scene, a single picture. All this, kept as a fotografic rough draft, is then brought into its large painted form. What emerges are parallel layouts of reality, in which the artist shows other possible realities only by changing and rearranging the existing. This painter is not interested in what is but rather in what could be. Eventhough Kalaizis works are done in a naturalistic manner they base on a strict and formal architecture of abstract surfaces - their underlying impact leading beyond the narrative.

"Abstraction for him being the gradual forming of order. He succeeds by avoiding, omitting the redundant. But since in our world less and less seems right we experience order as an equivalent to reality. So order is the true sensation."
Dr. Peter Schlüter, Amsterdam Catalogue/Book "Brancard" 2003

References:
Miriam VLAMING Aris KALAIZIS:
Both artists received scholarships in the USA in 2005 given by the Freestate of Saxony Ministry of Science and Atrs and the Greater Columbus Arts Council.