On Saturday, October 8 at 20:00, the Sianti Gallery will be presenting the “Eros Kalos” exhibition, along with an album under the same title, published by University Studio Press. Aiming to reveal a different angle of the human essence – that of Love as a motivating force of life – 21 accomplished visual artists will be depicting Eros as a flawless idea, rather than an ephemeral act. The depiction of physical beauty leads to the recognition of the superiority of inner beauty. During this search for the ideal, 21 important contemporary writers and poets will be putting into words the paths our desires take in order to meet with absolute, eternal, consistent, flawless beauty, in other words, with Love itself.

The idea of an album as an Ode to Love has been realized by art historian Manos Stefanidis, who is also the curator of the exhibition. As he himself states: “Eros Kalos with 21 + 21 artists: What is happening here? A writing exercise transforming into an image. A collective experiment with old and future friends. As always, in the beginning there was the aleatory, a fragment. A random line, a trace, an abstract stroke on the white canvass, like a gold fly trapped inside a closed room. A suspicion of color. And then, there was movement. A meaningless back and forth, a bidirectional, equivocal, doubtful movement, a way of exorcising stasis, stillness and what’s worse, stagnation. We always have to do something, even if we can’t see the meaning of it. Even if we fail. Better still, we have to fail as best we can, in the way Beckett, the evangelist of the void, commands us. It all comes down to a line moving until it finds its own inner rhythm. A line not wanting to be beautiful, only aiming to be truthful. Like the trace of a seismographer’s needle. The greater and more dangerous its range and density, the deeper its meaning and accuracy. The closer it is to truth. And then comes the rhythm, born through repetition. Simple, boring at first, more unexpected after a while. And much more interesting. And only then, when the line starts dancing on paper, can it begin to narrate a story. When the different languages of rhythm, poetry and painting intertwine. When all three become a whole. When they become music. Only then does our instinct speak from the deeper layers of existence. Only then comes expression. A work of art? Much more than that. A work of life.”

Regarding the visual presentation of Eros, Vasiliki Sianti, Managing Director of Sianti Gallery, notes that “Nobody can remain untouched by the erotic passion, its crushing power and sentimental intensity. Art is deeply connected to passion and expression. Undoubtedly, eroticism is an intrinsic element of many artistic masterpieces, from Michelangelo to Picasso and from Klimt to Schiele, all of whom deified erotic pleasure, sometimes in a provocative and sometimes in a more sensual way. It is self-evident that woman and erotic love have always been a constant source of inspiration leading to great masterpieces.”

We must always keep in mind that love represents our inclination towards conquer, not conquer itself. This is the theory upon which the idea of platonic love is based, in the sense we give it nowadays: an ideal love not engulfing conquer. As the philosopher reminds us throughout the centuries: “…If he comes to meet his better half … then the thrill becomes utterly overwhelming due to feelings of tenderness, common root and affection. The two of them cannot endure to be separated, even for a moment…”
All because of the fact that this has always been our primal nature, a reminiscence of the time when we were truly whole.
And it is this yearning and this urge to become whole again, that we call Eros…

The Writers: Katerina Aggelaki Rouk, Petra Agathokleous, Giorgos Aristinos, Alexandros Asonitis, Nasos Vagenas, Thanasis Valtinos, Haris Vlavianos, Tasos Goudelis, Kiki Dimoula, Maro Douka, Filips Drakontaidis Gianis Efstasiadis, Vaggelis Koumpoulis, Gianis Metaxas, Giorgos Markopoulos, Kostas Mavroudis, Michalis Modinos, Pavlina Pampoudi, Sakis Serefas, Manos Stefanidis, Aris Sfakianakis, Dimitra Christodoulou, Tilemachos Chitiris.

The Artists: Dimitris Alithinos, Christos Antonaropoulos, Michalis Arfaras, Gianis Asimakopoulos, Giannis Valyrakis, Stathis Vatanidis, Giorgos Georgiadis, Andreas Devetzis, Christos Karas, Kiriakos Katzourakis, Thanasis Lalas, Marikita Manolopoulou, Maria Maragkoudaki, Gianis Moralis, Lila Belivanaki, Theodoros Papagianis, Aggelos Papadimitriou, Christina Papaioanou, Pavlos Samios, Panagiotis Siagris, Aggelos Spartalis, Kostas Spiriounis, Giorgos Stathopoulos, Konstantinos Tolis, Alekos Fasianos, Gianis Psichopedis.