A second-generation Greek-American, Thomas Chimes is a painter with his own special character and style and is seen as one of the outstanding exponents of his generation in Philadelphia, USA. Accordingly, in 2007 the prominent Philadelphia Museum of Art honored him with a major retrospective implemented with the contribution of the J. F Costopoulos Foundation.

Although the artist set out as a successor to the well-known school of "urban figurative painters", his fame and recognition is mainly due to his references to intellectualism and the movements around the turn of the twentieth century. Specifically, the figure of Alfred Jarry, who incarnates the myth of the "accursed" and marks the dawn of the 20th century, came to be something of an alter ego for Thomas Chimes.

In 1980 he embarked on the series of "white works", which is broadly seen as the most important one in his oeuvre. The series is based on the exclusive use of white and black, with rarely any other colours, whose painstaking combinations result in virtually monochromatic compositions in which the almost eerie lines usually trace figures or landscapes. The smaller works in this series deal with ontological questions, sometimes explicitly with the use of excerpts from pre-Socratic philosophers and sometimes hermetically through elliptical patterns.

This solo presentation of a major painter for the first time to the Greek public comes to fulfill the painter's own wish to exhibit in his country of origin.

From October 3 till November 17, 2013. For more information please visit: http://www.benaki.gr