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Solo exhibition
"Painting & illustration"
Centre of Contemporary Art
Museum Of Modern Greek Art
Rhodes 2-18 March 2001

text also available in Greek

Introduction

The text that follows
is written by the art historian
Polly Hatzimarkou, as an introduction
to the exhibition catalogue

First time I saw Spartalis’s work was during the exhibition “Poet in New York-Paintings based on F.G. Lorca’s poems”. Simple geometrical shapes and photoanalytical arrangements repeated in the background (a reference to the mosaic technique and the “comedia del arte”), and in the foreground there was the exceptional poetry of Lorca embodied into peculiar, ambiguous anthropoid portraits and horses.

However, these surrealist statements do not arise from this series of paintings. From his early works one can recognize these purely symbolic insinuations.

The picture within a picture (second representation inside human bodies or the “Cat”) dominates and creates successive games with the unconscious.

In 1999, Spartalis enters into a new kind of creative production. This links us to T.S. Elliot’s statement: “…the art of the past includes the ability for the creation of new art, but also, new art can model and transform our ideas for the art that came before it”. The artist sets up the “Acrobats”, an installation of 2x6 m (painting with mechanisms) presenting three hyper-inflated figures one on top of the other; in the background, the familiar colors of a circus marquee and right below a tiger that seems to watches for its prey. It is a translucent symbolism of the human’s tragic state in our contemporary society. The fragmentation of the human body and the construction of its mechanistic, dysfunctional replica, does not only emerge from the “Acrobats”, but also from the illustrations “Troades”, “Death” and the most recent work of the artist.

The supernatural, out of proportion human forms (“Nude with Lemons”, “Nude and Shadow”, illustration “Hedonistic Poems”), often cartoon-like distorted representations, try to transmute the way with which we approach the “real” and “artificial” body and identity of the contemporary person (post-modern hybridism). At the verge of delusion and reality, Spartalis caustically interferes with the “negotiation” of many years between the individual and the impersonal or mass-orientated, the serious-looking and the humorous. By absorbing an eclectic blend from various art trends (pop illustration, new realism, geometrical abstraction, comics, new expressionism, naive) he is expressed by a range of standpoints -often heterodox- in his artistic practice.

It was a great joy for my associate Mr. Zafiris Skandaliaris and myself to curate this exhibition. The visitor will have the opportunity to stroll around Spartalis’s most recent works (from the “Poet in New York” till present) as well as poem illustrations. We consider this series of artworks to be a completion of all his artistic experimentations and a personal “springboard” for new artistic dives.



Polly Hatzimarkou
Αrt historian
Curator of the Museum of Modern Greek Art

1.

2. Lejos de la escultorica... 2000
___30 x 40 cm, oil-pastel on paper

3. The swimmer 2000
___200 x 150 cm,  oil on canvas

4.

5. Woman in the window 2000
___70 x 170 cm, oil on wood

6. Man on the staircase 2000
___70 x 135 cm,  oil on wood

7.

8. Nude & shadow 2000
___50 x 180 cm, oil-pastel on paper

9. Nude with lemons 2000
___50 x 180 cm,  oil-pastel on paper

10. On the Road 2001
___50 x 70 cm, oil-pastel on paper

11. Jamaica Monster 2001
___50 x 70 cm,  oil-pastel on paper

12.

13. The angel 2001
___50 x 70 cm, oil-pastel on paper

14. Woman in love 2001
___50 x 70 cm,  oil-pastel on paper

15.

16. The gang 2001
___50 x 70 cm, oil-pastel on paper

17. The state 2001
___50 x 70 cm,  oil-pastel on paper

illustrations (36 parts from the following illustrations)


1. Self-illuminated light 1998
___10 parts, 12x16 cm, acrylic on paper

2. Aphrodite 1999
___10 parts, 12x16 cm, acrylic on paper

3. Standing Man 1998
___6 parts, 12x16 cm, acrylic on paper

4. Troades 1999
___6 parts, 12x16 cm, acrylic on paper

5. Desire 1999
___6 parts, 12x16 cm, acrylic on paper

6. Death 1999
___7 parts, 12x16 cm, acrylic on paper

7. The inner harbour 1999
___7 parts, 25x35 cm, acrylic on paper

8. Blue poems 2000
___14 parts, 10x14 cm, oil-pastel on paper

9. Hedonistic Poems 2000
___14 parts, 10x14 cm, oil-pastel on paper

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