During the last century a major development has taken place with a main aim the promotion of an international style in arts.

The motive behind this phenomenon was initially economic mainly in capitalistic societies - art dealers acting like bankers promoting and distributing art in every major city in the Western world acting as a nucleus that houses various methods of mass-media of communication.

Likewise serving the same purpose but with different reasoning, a politically oriented motive accumulated in the Eastern block- art acts as a strong instrument for propaganda and the state assumes the role of the dealer, leading to the coined term 'socialist realism'.

Globalization has found the two motives merging within any social system.

It is essential to examine the esthetic credentials of these two types of Internationalism in art and to compare them with the credentials of Universality in arts, an art that was usually personal in its motivations and directed to an audience limited in extent and comparatively sophisticated in its taste or sensibility.

To distinguish sharply between Universality in arts and Internationalism in arts, certain issues are brought to consideration.

Universality is a human quality.
Internationalism is a political concept.
Universality is a question of depth- of the depth of the artist's vision and sympathy.
Internationalism is a question of width-of the extent of which the artist is expected to appeal.
Universality is the expression of a personal vision or a subjective experience.
Internationalism is an objective record of contemporary events.

Charalambos & Vaso Sergiou have raised issues of concern that penetrate the skin, stirring the essence of human action and reaction.

Their search of the personal experience and the imprinting of phobias in introspection (1999-01) has stressed the responsibilities of the family towards the formulation of the personality of any individual.

Their investigation of the relationship between the 'worm' (umbilical cord) and any individual in disconnection (2001-03) implies that every healthy, successful individual carries consciously his/her disconnected umbilical cord and that a connected person does not have any knowledge of this fact.

Their efforts to surface visually, the 'hidden self' of any individual in we are all responsible (2002) after attending intense art therapy sessions and via the confessions of other people behind masks, had stressed how the hidden self is influenced and restructured by society, family values, education and religion.

In scentless (2004) they looked into the fact that the act of conditioning people's behavior by imposing masks and attitudes results from an act of violence often masquerading as love.

Charalambos & Vaso Sergiou are fascinated by the ability of man to register and analyse the experience. In Media (2005) they attempted to transit media images, in the viewers mind, aiming to divert the process to a personal experience.

In search of the process that records history, Charalambos and Vasos Sergiou merge both art history and art association in their project unauthorized histories 2008, but in reverse practice. Instead of quoting from an existing, historically documented work of art by a particular artist to create a work of their own, the Sergious appropriate the artist's personal history and creative impulse to create a work that could be that artist's own. Through a seamless weave of fact and fiction, they rewrite the (minor) history of 20th and early 21st century art through a series of unrelated possible vignettes in the lives of 22 internationally acclaimed artists, episodes that generated works of art that for one reason or another have remained in obscurity.

Intrigued by the artist's identity in relation to the viewer, in Do not feed the Humans (2008) they involved imaginary debutantes artists whose work (in fact, Ch & V Sergiou's work) provoked the experience of differing levels of aesthetic understanding showing the crucial contribution of the perceived artistic intention that determines the aesthetic experience of the viewer.

Concluding their acts of throwing arrows towards the viewer, the two artists had presented an anonymous artwork (2008) in a group show exhibition, taking place in a common urban space. The subjective predisposition imposed upon the viewer by the known identity and history of the creator often suppresses the initial reaction of the critic towards the artwork, not allowing one's primal instincts to be expressed.

Charalambos & Vaso Sergiou as artists do not live in isolation and are not immune towards the international style in arts that is surrounding them. However, their work is close to the earth (...or the soul) - it was also the belief of the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright that the secret of art lies close to the earth. His allegorical statement suggests that art is in some sense intimately related, not only to the social structure but even to the very soil and landscape of a country.

Nothing in my experience of the art of the Past has ever shaken that belief.

During the long trip that awaits me...I may not be watching.
My herewith optimistic earthly moments that I yet experience, convinced me that man is a responsible being.
Art- and I think this was the conclusion of philosophers like Hegel, Nietzsche and Burckhardt- as it existed in the past is a thing of the past.

Charalambos & Vaso Sergiou are artists of the present and belong to a human race that uses its power and vision with regenerated sensibility to create a new art, an art as universal as the art of the Past, an art of visual delight and serene form, of human measure and spiritual significance.