15 October Ð 30 October 2005
Opening times, Fri Ð Sun 12.00 Ð 18.00 or by appointment
Private view 14th
of October, 18.00 Ð 21.00
Nikolas Arvanitis work consists of sensual and humorous paintings
and drawings depicting imaginings of pallid plinthed
sculptures, semi-obscure objects and distorted female figures.
They are fantastic compositions
altogether; painterly portraits of an oversized hermaphroditic figure in a
romantic landscape, two hairy heads stuck on poles, lollipops, sausages and
flying plinths. This ever-changing, eclectic subject matter emerges almost
completely from the artists imagination in form of an
autoerotic monologue. The paintings are somewhat intimate glimpses of an
invented inner life into a world where humour outlasts seriousness; the
horrific co-exists with the hilarious and where Irony is a virtue.
ÒI see the act of painting as an act of
obsessive unfulfilled love. This obsession is linked to the idea of creating my
own fictional muse. By creating that kind of imagery, a fantastic act of a
murder takes place in my unconscious. I then, dismember the body into small
parts of flesh and bones. ItÕs like wanting to know your loved one from the
inside, wanting to know the immaterial substance by exploring the matter. The
final act however takes place in reality in the form of a painting. I start
connecting the dismembered pieces at will, so as to create an eroticised
psychological landscape in which I could live in, being one with my fictional
muse. The end result is a kind of an aesthetic mutation, pleasing and
disturbing at the same time.Ó
Nikolas Arvanitis graduated from