“Snakes and Ladders”
Ground Floor
09.11 – 04.12/2017
Skoufa Gallery launches on Thursday, 9 November, at 7.30 p.m. the solo exhibition of Tassos Mantzavinos entitled “Snakes and Ladders” Game. The exhibition will run until Monday, 4 December 2017.
In his paintings and constructions of the last two years, the viewer encounters the thematic obsessions of an important creator: ships, castles, churches, banners, riders, dogs, dragons and snake-dragons, present around the figure of the painter or reflect sides of his soul.
The acceptance of solitude and its employment as another secret power of communication, is one of the main features of the art of Mantzavinos. This time the painter «amuses» loneliness through the game. In the bright colors of the fan that moves with the wind direction and symbolizes the joy of life, Mantzavinos opposes the black models of hermit. “The painter has all the features of the hermit. It’s like he wants to discipline at sirens. He is experiencing this contradiction and sometimes should renounces life itself, “says the author.
Through his love for the folk textiles, shows for the first time in Skoufa Gallery paintings in a series of frontal, hanging from the ceiling canvases, giving them position in space and not just on the surface of the wall. The whole process of painting operation in Mantzavinos’ work resembles an exercise, which involves the introversion, the desolation. In order to demonstrate this, the painter makes a comparison with the classic game of his youth, the Snakes and Ladders. The curator of the exhibition George Mylonas states that the purpose of Mantzavinos, game is to reach high, to ascend on a building that looks like a temple: the Church is the ego of the artist and the art of making has all the characteristics of the ritual of initiation.
