This collection of paintings are mixed media compositions (graffiti markers, acrylic colours, pencils, permanent ink, pens, collages etc.) that form a series of short stories framed around the narrative of ‘defeat’ and its innate phantasmagoria.
In the artist’s words: “I’ve always been interested in the defeated. My main interest is to portray a person trapped in dire straits, caught in the snare of denial while those living in victory, happiness or joy mean nothing to me. Happiness has no depth. The taste of water has no depth either and that is why it is so important to everyone. Defeat is a fate we all share even though we try to fool ourselves with petty successes, university degrees, awards, beautiful wives, bravery medals promotions, luxurious cars, luxurious houses, business deals, expensive funerals. Defeat is the inescapable destiny of mortal beings, nations and civilizations.
What we are all after, therefore, is not victory but endurance. One must endure. Life is more like a boxing match than a game of chess. A washout wrestler, an old prostitute, a poet in a madhouse, a forgotten movie star, a painter who let yellow take over his soul, a man on the cross, a lame and ragged pedlar, Sachtouris’ forgotten one, Saint Sebastian hit by an arrow, Cuba on embargo a bankrupt Greece and anything that endures is what i’m interested in.”
These are my heroes and this is what the crowds love and i am the crowd and the flame that consumes me. I am thus divided in two, as Takis Sinopoulos described in his poems. All this is loved by a crowd that is exquisitely ravenous and naive – yet another scenery of damnation, yet another neon sign in Hell and we are all here, living in Greece of 2014 in this scenery and its sublime phantasmagoria.”
