1995 . Critics from Harris Kambouridis .  

..a car that runs , .. And wear should it stop ?

minimalization and game in the works of Lazrous Maravas .

Maravas has tenderness and a playful mood of previous eras.

Years ago, when he first appeared on the scene, he used to exhibit at the gallery. Old rusty iron, unhurried from the earth, their original shape just being distinguished, objects which he that way save and gave them life again .An archeologist of every day life he revived old tin, plates, wire, cookware .He didn't talk as much of deterioration and the old taming time but the joy of collecting junk and playing with it. Later, the painter made his interests of explicit, filling up the gallery with figures of the < little footballers > the popular boys game of the postwar decades though which in competitive spirit in the so called < Pool rooms > .In his recent exhibition he exhibits small sized cars, made of several old material. So Lazarus seems to love the toys of his tender age and he revives them through his exhibitions. In his thirty years of age his personal vision and his means of expression have cleared up and the artist is already going through a course of wider establishment. What does he convey to art then?

At first sight, his works gain air interest through their simple expression, a simple, graphical figure which a car states. All alone, in continuance, in repetition and in small differentiations , a word which forms phrases .

< A car that runs and runs and where should it stop ? > Acted an old children's game. IN ENGLAND lor in some other country.. The other player answered. And what color should he ask for? Asked the first player again, and so forth and a riddle questionnaire was formed for the players. Maravas himself has as his questions vehicle the figure of his childhood car but his questions are far more complex, although their expression is simple .Can someone be plaguing now a days when performing art? . Can he be a person of few words , laconic ,minimal like the rhythmic beat of the dancing music or like the continuous throbbing of the pistons of a machine . Isn't a little color needed as the childhood excitements ask for or many, as art does as well ? .

The works of Lazarus are already heading towards an inaccessible area and are searching for the relationship between joy and machine. Like years ago they were investigating the relationship betweens the destructive time and the tenderness of memories .Maravas is not a cerebral painter , the things he makes are products of choices that hide a childish purity and spontaneity . That may be the reason why his works capture the viewer's eye before our analytical mood confirms all that can be hidden begin those happy games with the figure of a car .It's best this way.

In the past few years the proscenium of his generation has been filled by artists so absorbed in mental predestining of their works that forget to state emotions .Lazarus excites , just because he states his emotions .

1996. Art. Historian Rula Palada .6000 Khm.

A JOURNEY TO EUROPE .

The globalization of the economy, the shock of the new technology, especially on issues of unification through cultural union, creates a gigantic market of concepts where everyone can be supplied with myths, symbols and images. The contrast between the cultural polyphony and the homogeneous strengths of the trade ecumenically reveal, through the complication of reaction, feelings of her- rushers

Confining and feel. However between the dissolution and the ecumenically can anyone dream of another world , ignoring the hard sense of the universal market ? Could an artist in this pessimism cultural atmosphere , play the games of his childhood .

Lazarus Maravas continuous his conjectural formality of the game with the small car which ...runs and runs and where it could stop ?...and what color would attain ? What could be hiders behind this joyous child's game and the small graphitic figure of the car ?

This small car began from the irons to end yap in its plain graphitic expression from a sheet-iron . This small figure begin a trip not understandable , but real , a searching trip . It begin from Larissa for a wandering of 6000 Khm .in Europe .

In every Station is being photographed in front of every movement - symbols of each European City . When it returns to its base, there have been imputed all over it the prints of its searching, the flags of the European Countries it came through.

Maravas materialized an old idea, when the movement is succeeded with the real trip of the invented car .The small car as a hero of < road movies > gains experiences and the experiences get colored .The small colored .The small colures figure , in this lone ...trip loges her color and trough this longs those relationships which mold the face of the culture the face of the European spirit .

The art and the reality, the reality and the invention write holding each one of then their own characteristics.

Europe and the European vision of the Unity remain the points of this searching of color, becomes one identity search, white the small figure of the car , object with symbolic attributes becomes a cultural sing .