Spyros Anastasiou’s debut exhibition at Art Seen 

Nicosia gallery Art Seen welcomes a new exhibition at its space this October by hosting Spyros Anastasiou’s first solo show titled The Alchemy of Story Telling. Curated by Maria Stathi, the exhibition opens onThursday and will feature a new body of works including a site-specific installation. For his debut exhibition, Anastasiou invites the viewer to experience his practice through his own storytelling reflected on sculptures made of marble and plaster.

Anastasiou’s fixation with forms, patterns and fragments of figures follows a strategy of repetition. This repetition creates sculptural alchemy of the initial form that transforms itself into an energy of shape. While subconsciously exploring his own identity as a Cypriot, personal and mythological stories create a new reading for the audience, signifying Anastasiou as the storyteller that brings forward an experience of imaginary rituals and innocence.

While in an almost perpetual identity crisis of his own origins, Anastasiou fixates on ‘hair’ being the symbol that remains constant throughout his work. He reflects upon his fascination with the ancient sculpture of Kouros and its representation of youth and male beauty through repetitive variations of the sculpture’s spherical hair patterns.

Anastasiou’s work is the innocent simplification of the archetypal patterns of Kouros and its antecedent Sumerian and Egyptian sculptures. Like a DNA strand that can be traced all the way back to ancient civilizations, the archetype of the spherical hair patterns, the body language as well as the material approach to the male figure has undergone minimal modifications. Hair is as close as you can get to the alchemy of a person and through these sculptures, Anastasiou is attempting to extract and explore his own DNA as a storyteller, an alchemist, a magician.

The Alchemy of Story Telling

Solo exhibition by Spyros Anastasiou. October 13-November 11. Art Seen Gallery, Nicosia. Opening day: 7.30pm-10pm. Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 4pm-7.30pm or by appointment. Tel: 22-006624