Karagkiozis and I

17 Jan 2012 - 11 Feb 2012

17.1 – 11.2/2012

Tassos Mantzavinos presents at Skoufa Gallery his new work which is based on the puppet figure of Karaghiozis. The exhibition will open on Tuesday 17th January at 7.30.

Mantzavinos is not the first artist who was inspired by Karaghiozis. Many more folk and academic artists were inspired by Karaghiozis (Sikeliotis, Migadis, Bost, Argyrakis, Hantzikyriakos-Gykas and Tsarouchis, to name a few). Mantzavinos gives us his own version of a Shadow Puppet Theatre. Memories from shows that he has watched and folk paintings by the Karaghiozis players mark his work. ‘The tree with the magic spell’, ‘Karaghiozi’s Shipwreck’, ‘Alexander the Great and the Cursed Serpent’ are some of the shows mentioned in Mantzavinos’s paintings.

Michalis Ieronimides – a scholar and researcher who studied the origins of the Shadow Puppet Theater- believes that ‘Mantzavinos ‘s paintings are not a mere narration of the plays but rather the depiction of the atmosphere during the show. In Mantzavino’s paintings the serpent has a thousand eyes and Alexander the Great gets trapped under the tree. Nionios is transformed into a warrior armed with a sword behind the puppeteer…

Ladies and gentlemen, the show is about to start!