Loss is undoubtedly a very common - and clearly traumatic - part of the human. The most common response to loss is a tendency to silence or evade it. To approach “that which is lost” emotionally and artistically is an act of transcendence.

This conscious act of transcendence occupied the work of the two artists of the third bEam arts residency cycle. The exhibition On Finding What Is Lost presents the works of Birgit Szepanski and Orestis Delmas. Despite their very different media and practices, both approach the issue of loss in a tender and delicate way.

Birgit Szepanski, originally from the Hague and living in Berlin for many years, is concerned with urban memory and history. She has a doctorate on urban narratives in art from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and her visual work is research based. She uses archival material, collects documents, makes her own recordings, creates objects that bear the imprints of the spaces in which she conducts her artistic research.

The artistic research she carries out in Thessaloniki concerns the fragmented pieces of burial marbles from the old Jewish Cemetery of Thessaloniki. Based on the research and recording of the locations of these fragments by Martin Barzilai, she visits the places where they are located in the city and collects their imprints. This collection is made using the frottage technique on large pieces of fabric, which she then embroiders pointwise, emphasizing parts of the imprint. At the same time, she collects and reconstructs archival material concerning the life of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki before World War II, thus creating a visual narrative about a piece of urban history and memory that tends to be lost from the common consciousness.

Orestis Delmas is an architect and recent graduate of the Department of Architecture and Engineering. Alongside his architectural work, he has created a body of purely visual work which has been exhibited in Athens and Thessaloniki. His artistic media are primarily watercolor, gouache and colored pencils on paper. With these, he creates images of spaces with an intense dreamy and inner quality.

The series of works on which he worked during his residency at bEam arts has the general title Heartache. The dreamy landscapes with pastel shades of pink, violet and blue become a field within which he negotiates personal losses. Losses of communication, interpersonal relationships, familiar situations, lifestyle. The series of works he presents creates a narrative of internal states of how multiple losses are experienced, how one can approach them and ultimately how one can continue to live with an inner integrity, despite what has been lost. He constitutes his art as a therapeutic medium and explores not only the pain of loss but also the perspectives after it.