Panagiotis Siagris poses a question to the viewer, by confronting them with modern, urban environment, environmental change and its present and future consequences.

In his ‘Questions’ exhibition, which will be opened to the public on Friday, November 8, at 19.30, at the Ikastikos Kiklos Sianti Gallery and will continue until December 7, Panagiotis Siagris uses some of his favorite materials (such as canvas, oil, acrylics and plexiglass) turning his attention on a variety of subjects in order to stir the public’s reaction. In the twelve works exhibited on this particular event, nature and the urban environment are once more the protagonists, yet through a different looking glass.

“Siagris wants to produce a kind of art that does not submit to a simplistic painting, to decorativeness, to cheap drama, to the charms of trivial narration. Instead, he insists on things which may be more difficult, yet they are more enduring in time. He wants his stories (i.e. his personal experiences, his connotations, his images, his emotions steered by hard reality) to be founded on a safe, yet contemporary, formative language. To be classic and modern at the same time – difficult stuff! To produce paintings which are primarily an aesthetic and secondly an emotional gesture.”

This is how art historian Mr. Manos Stafanidis describes Panagiotis Siagris’ visual language. And he continues:
“This is why in his compositions he has invented so many ways of making reality appear less real, sometimes fluid and elusive and sometimes aggressively inverted, even dark in spite of his explosive colors. In his work, reality is always under dispute, leaving it to the viewer to decide upon its interpretation.”

On his latest work which will be presented at the Ikastikos Kiklos Sianti Gallery, Manos Stefanidis states:
“In this current exhibition the gloss of the plexiglass sometimes seems to be disappearing in order to allow the painting’s body to work on its own. In other instances, when the painting is an earlier work, it is placed beside the canvas as an installation, connoting both of the available approaches and letting the viewer decide.”

“Panagiotis Siagris is, above all else, an intellectual painter, an interlocutor of Gerhard Richter and Walter Benjamin, pondering on the dramatic changes on urban environment while longing for nature which is constantly withdrawing in the face of human fascism; for a liberty sent into exile as an excuse for irrational violence. He is a romantic of the contemporary era, producing hidden landscapes and secret explosions, overturns and figures putting up an act of their own fate; also couples embracing for their first, or their last kiss – who knows… Because things always pretend to be other things, exposed either to the sanctifying light, or to the forgiving darkness. Endly!”

Vassiliki Sianti, Managing Director of the Ikastikos Kiklos Sianti Gallery, elaborates on Panagiotis Siagris’ as follows: “Panagiotis Siagris’ paintings speak directly to the viewer. Whether through his architectural forms or his human figures and couples, he always achieves what others could only envy: to make his viewers identify with his paintings, investing them with their own experiences. His human figures – whether it is a swimmer jumping in the deep blue sea or a couple lying on the beach – lead the viewer to a recollection of their own memories.”