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Painting As Sport, Sport as one of the Fine Arts Tenacity, endurance, constant exercise and training - the craving for always going further to overcome one's own physical and mental limitations. The list of common points seems endless. The painter is a runner of races; a mountain climber; a diver; a cross-country skier. Using his brushes and his colors as a parachute or a delta plane, he jumps from the incredible heights of his imagination. Sometimes he seems to be dangling at the end of an elastic rope tied to the top of a bridge. The comparison applies to artists of the nineteen sixties and seventies: Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Sam Francis; to Wilhelm de Kooning also, who attacked the human figure with the impetus needed for throwing weights or javelin. The approach of Omiros, although no less fiery, provides a very different end result. Can it be attributed to his Byzantine roots or his long stay in Paris? His work is sometimes more akin to dancing or graceful ice-skating than wrestling and close combat. He actually practices a sport not included yet in the Olympic categories - tight rope walking. He treads on that thin line dividing abstraction and figuration. His is not just a vague or allusive figuration but an almost photographic resemblance, catching the gesture in action - action painting as a much as painting the action. Pondering whether Omiros starts with a figure that is "abstractized" as his work progresses, is just as pointless as the famous question "What came first, the chicken or the egg?". Little does it matter when you witness the cock fight and the battle of the multicolored feathers flying in all directions! What makes Omiros' painting fascinating is that it brings the viewer much closer to the feeling of the effort than the mere contemplation of the athlete's feats on the television screen. It gives an almost tangible equivalent of the effort itself. It is a magnificent celebration of the human body, by a painter transcending his own frailty. It is a solitary game, played with an invisible team - that of all the greats of Art History. From Myron's discobole to the football players of Nicolas de Stael, and now the athletes painted by Omiros, there is a continuity: The challenge of immortalizing a brief instant of accomp lishment; the victory of a man over his weaknesses. It is an invitation to join in the love of life and the belief in its eternity. Marc Albert-Levin Paris, Februar y 18th 2004