On Friday, 14 March 2025, Sianti Gallery had the pleasure of presenting a solo exhibition by Angelos Spartalis, titled «Hug me / άναξ ιακ άναξ», with the subtitle “a tender result through acts of violence”. The artist takes a retrospect look at his personal, artistic past using painting, pottery, and his cinematic language, as he studies the concept of embrace, the touching of bodies. It is a thematic idea born though the experience of the pandemic, which has developed as a visual answer to the criminalization of physical contact. Under the slogan “Since we cannot hug… let’s paint about  it”, the artist himself notes  in the clearest of ways, regarding this tender approach of bodies: “It is far from being an innocent or a sweet experiment. And I say this, because, nowadays, my embraces may seem sweet. But they are not sweet, Yet, they surely are tender. And this very tenderness of my hugs is the result of violent acts, such as curfews, the lust of terror, the illiteracy in social media, the general indifference and many more.”

The exhibition is a combination of three different series of the artist’s works, which stand autonomously, but intertwine both thematically, and aesthetically.

• «Carré-Carré» (painting, cinema / 2019-2025)
• «Raku-Raku» (pottery, cinema / 2022-2025)
• «Έρως κατοπτρικός» (painting,sculpture / 2024-2025)

At the same time, we will be presenting two large erotic banners (oil on linen), as well as various independent paintings, depicting the touching of bodies.

SEE THE CATALOGUE

The first part of the «Carré-Carré» series, presented in 2021 at Sianti Gallery, was the instigator for Spartalis’ multiannual work. As Manos Stefanidis notes in the catalogue by the same name, regarding the handmade, painted movies: “…Spartalis shows with surgical accuracy the way, with which the most tender, sincere, spontaneous thing, a kiss or a hug, can become – under special circumstances – a mortal threat. How desire and love can become a kind of death”. Haris Kambouridis has characterized this visual-cinematic work as an exceptional and attractive artistic conception, as well as a kind of meaningful content: “I heartedly congratulate him and feel proud of him. I thank him for his impulsion and inspiration, which led him, at a time of universal pause, to create innovative works, hybrids lingering between the edgy montage of filmmaking , and the strong brush strokes of painting.”

With the series «Raku-Raku»,  the ancient arts of pottery, engraving and painting interwind harmoniously with the newly born art of cinema, while “Mirroring Eros” , an invention of collector Giorgos Sambatakos, consists of double-faced paintings.

Tit is made of 30 sculptures in the shape of a bifurcating column made of iron, mirrors, glass, acrylic and oil on double-faced paper. Writer Giorgos-Icaros Babasakis, referring to the mirroring loves of Angelos Spartalis, notes:

“The most modern phrase for the most post-modern, the contemporary phase of love, is this: “Das Selbstbewusstsein erreicht seine Befriedigung nur in einem anderen Selbstbewusstsein’’ [Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, εκδ. Suhrkamp, σ. 144], meaning “Self-consciousness is fulfilled only through another self-consciousness” [ Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind]. It denotes that the loved one is a mirroring image of his/her partner, the ultimate inter-existence, the penetration/self-loss/ejaculating of two egos into the noble furnace of passion until their final merging. Anything else is sheer  bourgeois philistinism and hilarious old-fashionism”.

At the end of the day, Spartalis’ hugs are a circle closing and reopening – an act repeating itself, much like the human need for connection. Yet, each hug includes a form of domination. In the ancient years, “ἄναξ” meant the leader, him who determined the fate of his people. In our hugs, our “ἄναξ” is our need for tenderness, the unbeatable force, which urges us to break any barriers, to defy distance, to become, once again, bodies touching one another. And again. And again.