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After 17 years, Sianti Gallery has once again the honor of presenting Giorgos Georgiadis, one of the greatest contemporary Greek sculptors. On Friday 10, at 19:00, this restless artist will present a selection of works created during the last decade, under the title “Mythology Backwards”. Manos Stefanidis, an Emeritus Professor of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and curator of the exhibition, greatly impressed by the energetic plasticity and explosive humor of the artist’s latest works, notes:
“…Today, Georgiadis presents classical instances of the ancient Greek mythology with an attitude which could be seen as a kind of heresy through the expressionistic deformations and the explosive physicality of his figures, adjusted with great ingenuity to the needs of the modern world. It’s a kind of reversing mirror, an Anti-myth. Thus, we see young Europa flirting on her own initiative with Zeus-taurus in a most provocative way, making him her puppet, while Omphale conquers a feeble and subdued Hercules. Or a curvy, black Venus wearing a jockey hat and mules, with a biracial Eros by her side. What we see, is a complete reversal of the characteristic Renaissance or Baroque themes which have been haunting the collective memory of the European civilization. A kind of heretic demystification. And an arousing use of form. Because Georgiadis is the sculptor of contradiction and conflict. Of the dialectic dispute between classical and the anti-classical. This is what it’s all about. It’s about the idea that a work of art should not simply be a decorative process, but a means of interpreting all ineffable things. And it is something which becomes crucial at a time when Art lingers between hypocritical convention and shallow impression.” Georgiadis’ sculptures have a life of their own in their own time, full of symbolic, even crude implications. As the artist himself underlines, he dwells somewhere between myth and history: “…the one is intertwined with the other, like fingers entangled together. Of course, myths come with many variations and interpretations. This is why my primary aim has always been an imaginative approach to the myth, without a necessarily logical narrative.
This gave me the chance to spatially organize a reality which, even though it is differentiated as to its meaning, it remains harmonious as to its composition, constructed out of shapes, masses and colors, elements which – together with the work’s narrative – characterize the stimuli and allegories of this particular form of art.”
And this is why Stefanidis is a fervent advocate of these works, describing them as a kind of “Anti-myths”. Because to him: “…It is as if he wants to ‘speak’ – in a symbolic and playful way – of a world in which everything has come ‘upside down’. And it has become so in a provocatively uncomprehensive manner, which is characterized by the chaotic undoing of principles, hierarchies, symbols, ideologies etc. Is the artist laughing or weeping, as he describes this absurd theatrum mundi? Should we interpret his curvy, ‘à la Bottero’ figures – for instance, his depiction of Terpsichore as a ballerina with tiny ballet shoes on her large feet – as a ridicule or as a celebration of the female body? Are the sculptor’s scabrous themes meant as a playful jest or as a grim omen regarding our common future? This is for the viewers to decide…”