Yiannis Fokas' opus is characterized by mainly two strategic tools, through which he serves his aesthetic proposals: On the one hand, by a narration that extends on large surfaces, aiming at the entrenchment of a whole cosmic landscape, even if that is just a face or its trait. On the other hand, by the reversal of this narration through various dissimilar painting areas, which gain autonomy and act against the fundamental embracement, in other words, against the illusionary space itself, in which the original narration is developing.
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We can discern the practice, the development and the whetting of these tools through time and through the succession of the painter's different periods. However, what is mainly taking place is the larger and larger surface of action, that is, the bigger and bigger frames that almost end up replacing a whole architectural interior. The worlds which meet within Yiannis Fokas' opus can equally be microcosms or cosmological giants. For instance, in the case of The Mouths, the inset drawing, as an enlarged microcosm standing before the observer, comes to line up against and finally to establish an organic unity with the surrounding painting pieces we get obliged to observe as ground plans. In the case of the universal paintings of his last period, a whole cosmic landscape defines exceptionally cetrifigured depths that are reversed by very small areas which - as Hoffman drills - can reliably work either as masses or as holes. What's more, the color or their complementary grisaille wings of the angels can be interrupted by stylistically inserted small areas, well-worked on with heterogenous structural elements.
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These choices by Fokas' end up commenting on attempts for solutions that have characterized all the powerful works representing Modernism. For instance, the conversation between drawing and painting on the same surface has been served, under different circumstances, by Picasso, while the cosmogonies in miniature once troubled Miró. Last but not least, cases such as the angelic wings or the anatomic elements of the heart render a forerunner of a surrealistic negotiation. However, the fact that the painter ventures to put the issues of his predecessors on such a large dimension, forces him to resort to stylistic solutions which are strictly personal and which in reality put forward, in the harshest manner, all the issues of the illusion within the two dimensions. Because the observer is forced to move along the painting and, what's more, not from the common visual center of observation by Vitruvius. What is commented upon in this way is not only the physical relation of the observer to the canvas, but also the physical relation of the observer to the structural elements (particularia), without ever losing the original reference to the observed physical object.
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Therefore, he uses the teachings of classical painting, which starts from the observation of the model, to later mock, through the enlargement and the contradiction of the less and less recognizable organic particles, at the evolution of depiction, as it is gradually flooding our urban and suburban lives, our anthropological and religious doctrines, as well as the cultural fragments of amore and more vague Zeitgeist, the disruption of which we pretend not to notice. The heterogenous nature of the elements conversing in Fokas' paintings - especially in his most recent artistic production - ends up quite emotional and even heart-breaking, as the human figure is absent as a unity, but its traces and the need of its presence are rendered imperatively. In a way, Fokas seems to be answering to the painter of The Arnolfini Marriage, telling him that "I might have been there". Through this strategy and as, through time, Fokas is becoming a more and more powerful master of his techniques and of the economy of his tips (flows of colors moving to different directions that raise the observation of what is standing before me), the painter raises doubts upon the whole question posed by Modernism, in other words, upon the fact that the artist is asked through forms per se to comment on how we perceive real reality.

He doubts whether real reality actually exists or has been replaced by simulations both strongly demanding and insidiously involved in our everyday urban reality. It is his own way to invite us to a revolution against the visually self-evident. It is his own way to underline the need for critical active vision. It is for this very reason that Fokas' opus may be insofar put together with the similar problematics of Tim Mara, Paul Huxley and Nick de Ville, with the ulterior purpose of transgressing the literally threatening visual soup in which we are almost sinking. The analysis of Fokas' works was elaborated after an exhaustive discussion on and about them with the whole team of my co-curators, Ms Anna Dinopoulou and Mr Vassilis Gimisis, but mostly with Dr. Ilias Koromilas, who has been closely watching the artist's work over the past few years in his private studio, where we often meet and discuss about it together with our mutual undergraduate and postgraduate students.