Counting more than 25 years in FirefighterDeputy Dimitris Hytas never stopped looking for that field that could combine his business activities and knowledge with art. Completing his studies four years ago at the School of Fine Arts and remaining active and fighter in the Fire Brigade and his duty to protect human life, natural wealth and property, he tried to translate his experiences from the battles with the fires – and not only. For him, as he explains to the Athens -Macedonian News Agency, these are two worlds, which do not conflict but are alienated.
The “germ” for art was involved from an early age and as the years went by, he decided to study in the Fine Arts and to specialize in sculpture, while also having a degree in Forestry. Among the stimuli for the creation of his works are events he has been called upon to deal with, such as large fires, where ashes were a source of inspiration and materials in his undergraduate, to develop an artistic intervention in the fine arts, making a “circular disc.”
“I approach art as a field of existential reflection. My thinking is triggered by experiential elements through experience. I experiment and try to give a narrative. For me it is a relief valve, a discharge I need, one feedback. I close one chapter called fire brigade and try to open the other during the same or next day – but with the same respect for both. I do not bid for one in relation to the other. There is absolutely a balance and a respect. I turn experiences into aesthetic values. This is what I am trying to do, “Mr Hytas notes in RES-EIA.
Reminding those days of 2021 in Northern Euboea, Mr. Hytas narrates the difficulty in the extinguishing air, with a “veil of ash and dust” as he says to cover the sky and the ground forces to make their own efforts. In this context, he created wood carvings that were intended to demonstrate the concept of loss, as reflected in Euboea.
However, he explains, he attempts these extreme experiences not to capture them with an artistic savagery.
“These extreme experiences that are engraved in my memory and in my soul are not interpreted, are not translated with an artistic savagery. I do not work through a framework of sadness. That is, I try to give an optimistic message, let’s say, when I can, perhaps some or schematic, morphologically. I try to give it an optimistic note, “he points out, stressing that it is always important for him not to lag behind his business duties in relation to art. “I have to work sufficiently for both livelihoods but also consistently against my superiors and the same position I have,” he says.
Artistically anxious, Mr. Hytas has managed to find his place of works in exhibitions in Paris, such as at Art Capital, the University of Western Attica … while he has also built the scene of the Byzantine drama “Divine Drama” that is hosted in the cultural sites these days.
At the same time, his 43 works are exhibited until August 31, 2025 at the Metropolitan General Hospital in Holargos as part of the “Reversal” exhibition.
As the curator of the report reports. Panagiotis Pangalos, Architects, Professor of the School of Applied Arts and PAA Culture, “The work of the artist Jimmy Hytas contains multiple reversals derived from the identity of nature and the bridging of the pivotal elements: of the creative process. ” And he adds that the fire, a symbol of circular time, transformation and regeneration of the mythical palm tree, is linked to the personal experience of the firefighter, observer of a nature who dies and is reborn by its ashes.
“The extreme experiences that Jimmy Pytas has experienced as a firefighter have been engraved in his memory and soul, but have not mourned in his artistic work. The destructive power of fire was never translated into a lament or visual savagery. On the contrary, the pain of loss has caused a mild development of its forms, which seems to derive from the pain of the natural world. His art emits a frequency of rhythmic tranquility, an almost transcendent acceptance of secular silence. And he himself, as a patron of nature and matter, but also as an observer of their perpetual change, continues to live in a field of constant investigation of the relationship between energy and time, “Mr Pangalos said.