‘Toy Factory’
Ilias Papailiakis 2020-2022
Exhibition Organisation: Skoufa Gallery
Exhibition Curator: Christoforos Marinos
Opening Day: Thursday 3rd November 2022, 19.30-21.30
Skoufa Gallery is hosting Ilias Papailiakis’ new solo exhibition at the ‘Parnassos’ Literary Society. The exhibition opens on Thursday 3rd November (19:30-21:30) and will run until the 30th of November 2022.
Titled ‘Toy Factory – Ilias Papailiakis 2020-2022’, it consists of a group of artworks created during the last couple of years. It is the sequel to Papailiakis’ previous exhibition at the Municipal Gallery of Athens, in 2020, and marks his first collaboration with Skoufa Gallery. Christoforos Marinos has curated the current exhibition.
In this new group of artworks, Papailiakis examines the potential of his new painting idiom. While studying its width, he enters a rather extrovert space with spirituality. He examines various concepts such as the relationship of the game and of oneself with the animal, the notion of friendship, of companionship and of consent.
Papailiakis creates artworks that become systems with which he studies balance, size and quantity. His subject matter regularly refers to the Bible. In the artwork titled ‘Toy Factory’ (2021) he responds to the demands that a large-scale surface entails and plays with its size. ‘It is an artwork that is a good step towards my limits” he comments. In addition to the ‘Toy Factory’ the exhibition includes ten more oil paintings from 2020-2021. Papailiakis names his paintings while still working on them: ‘Fishing’, ‘The Sleep’, ‘Woman with a bent stick’, ‘Two Figures’, ‘Night’, ‘Sunset at the Palace’, ‘Life at the countryside’, ‘Time of the Sun’, ‘Time of the Wizard’ and ‘The Fish Tank’. Every piece from this series of artworks deals with the relationship of the figure with objects and in each piece the horizon is rendered differently.
Three large-scale drawings accompany the paintings of the exhibition (‘Mother of the Sun’, ‘Boy with a Butterfly’, ‘Homeless People’), executed with pencil on paper from the series ‘The Shape of the Sky’ (2021) together with one sculpture executed in 2022.
Papailiakis’s black and white drawings resemble stamps and reveal his deep knowledge of the line’s potential and his acute sense of balance. The same ability is detected through his constructions with cardboard and pencil, particularly in ‘The Scribe’ and ‘The Great Unknown’. The sculpture ‘Six Studies on a Cycladic Solid’ (2022) consists of six glass boxes placed on top of two long tables and reflects in a three-dimensional way, the analog-system with which Papailiakis paints during the last 25 years.
Location:
‘Parnassos’ Literary Societey
8, St George Karytsis square, Athens, 10561
Visiting Hours:
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 10.30-14.30 & 17.30-20.30
Wednesday: 10.30-14.30
Saturday: 11.00-14.30
For more information please contact:
Skoufa Gallery
4, Skoufa st, Kolonaki, Athens 10763
Tel.: 210 36 43025, 210 3603541
Email: info@skoufagallery.gr
Website: www.skoufagallery.gr
*Photography of artworks by Yannis Alexandropoulos / ELLASTRATION
