“orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano”
(we should wish for a healthy mind in a healthy body)
Iuvenalis, Saturae, Liber IV, Satura X, 356

In the group exhibition “A Sound Mind in a Sound Body”, four young artists approach contemporary, figurative art on the theme of nude portraits and the human body, through drawings and paintings with oil, pencil, charcoal and ink on paper and canvas. In the same space, the elaborate, sculptural forms by Aris Katsilakis develop an intensive dialogue in their own terms with the human figures depicted around them, either painted in a realistic style, outlined, whole or with their wounds open wide.

Aris Katsilakis,
Mutation,
white teracotta,
45 x 55 x 35 cm, 2016

Like preposterous findings of the archaeology pickaxe in the hands of a future researcher, the white terracotta ceramics emerge in the exhibition space foretelling the upcoming mutations of human beings in a hideous post-industrial era. Biomorphic but artificial, organic yet industrial, Katsilakis’ sculptures detest the guise of skin and refuse the cohesion of a complete body. Instead of composing, he seems to have dissected his futuristic hybrids, in order to reveal their abject interior, the parts they are made of, their rambling arteries and their operating mechanisms. Detached from the whole, Katsilakis’ “mutations” proudly display their self-sufficiency, while their elaborate curves and sleek surface invite the visitor’s gaze in an almost voyeuristic manner right through all their cavities and protrusions.

Aris Katsilakis,
Mutation,
white teracotta,
35 x 95 x 45 cm, 2016

Nicolas Paradiselo,
Diptych And Finally
He Was The Water,
pencil on paper,
dimensions variable, 2014

Faced with an indiscernible condition that outreaches them, the figures in Nicolas Paradiselo’s diptychs hover in unknown time and place, remaining still before a decisive step. Staring at them, one has to go beyond the virtuosity of pencil drawing and come up with the link which binds together the two images, thus inventing a possible narrative behind each couple of images. Paradiselo, despite scarce allusions to a personal iconography and bibliography frame of references, is more likely keen on evoking multiple readings of his art pieces; introducing unambiguous hints of his narrative into the titles he often gives, at the same time he eliminates iconological elements that would lead the viewers to safe clues about his own version of the story, which remains thus largely untold. In his artistic universe, the slightest detail is meticulously planned and executed and despite the overarching stillness of his figures, a great deal of director’s instructions seem to have mastered the final result. Usually engulfing both roles, the artist’s and his model’s one, he is amused by interchanging positions, playing with the binaries of subject-object, creator-spectacle, in an ironic gesture of blatant introspection and self-reflection.

Nicolas Paradiselo,
Diptych My Mother Said
It Would Be Ok,
pencil on paper,
dimensions variable, 2016

Eleana Antonaki,
So Did We,
oil on canvas,
97 x 97 cm, 2015

Painted with oil on canvas, Eleana Antonaki’s figures are stripped of their subjectivity, only to expose their fragile corporeality all the more eloquently. Antonaki seems to be fascinated by the human body in its most vulnerable moments; disease, surgical operation, injury, all signs of human weakness and mortality are illustrated through detached bodies, withdrawn before an exterior will, forcefully imposed on them. Her frame leaves out their faces, depriving them even of this primary feature of personalisation that would deem them as subjects of a certain narrative. Strongly influenced by photography and cinema aesthetics, both Paradiselo and Antonaki’s evocative paintings inhabit the exhibition space as black and white snapshots of a story that eludes us.

Spyros Prokopiou,
Cuprum-Less,
charcoal and pencil on canvas,
200 x 170 cm 2014

On the other hand, Spyros Prokopiou uses charcoal, acrylic paint and pencil on canvas in an effort to capture movement. Kaleidoscopic clusters of children and adults’ naked bodies compile their own idiosyncratic (dis)order. Unit and multitude converge, while figures are clearly attributed in terms of drawing, in a stark contrast with the realistic, cinema-like style of the previous paintings. However, birth, sickness and deformation are also situated in the core of Prokopiou’s research. Meanwhile, he manages to move smoothly along the limits between autobiographical note and social commentary.

Dimitris Kokoris,
The Fish,
ballpoint on paper,
50 x 70 cm, 2014

Among them, Dimitris Kokoris’ over-detailed drawings reinstate the artistic gesture only to strangle the human figure in a crowd of representational, identifiable as well as abstract, fluid patterns. His suffocating compositions transfer directly associative reflections on paper, in a manner of personal diary or sketchbook. Opposed to the solitude of the figures surrounding them, Kokoris’ drawings feature a multiplicity of figures of relatives and friends, animals and everyday objects, condensing innumerable narratives in a single arrangement. Articulations that in the rest of the artworks are only insinuated through their dramatic absence, are found here to overflow in an overwhelming hail of intertwined narratives.

“A healthy mind in a healthy body”? Not anymore, not yet.

Dimitris Kokoris,
Untitled,
ballpoint on paper,
50 x 70 cm, 2014