“Toy Factory”: Ilias Papailiakis 2020-2022

                 In May 2017, an article, published by the American magazine The Brooklyn Rail, argued that The Enigma of the Hour, painted by Giorgio de Chirico in 1910, can be considered the very first conceptual artwork in the history of art. According to Paolo Baldacci, de Chirico’s ambition was to ‘translate’ a thought or philosophical concept into artistic forms, and he succeeded in doing so before Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.

There is no doubt that Ilias Papailiakis’ work derives from the painting The Enigma of the Hour. If de Chirico pioneered because he understood that painting is a system by which the artist projects concepts, and not just emotions, Papailiakis can be proud that he creates work-systems that are studies of balance, size, and quantity.

Ilias Papailiakis’ exhibition at Parnassos, includes new works through which the artist tests the possibilities of his new idiom of his painting. By studying the range of this idiom, he enters a more spiritual state in a space that is more extroverted and has to do with the game. The relationship of the game and the self with the animal, companionship, co-existence and consent, are some of the concepts that the painter tries to attribute to his new works.

Leaving aside the eroticism and the element of rupture that it contains, Papailiakis turns to a theme with biblical references. His new works essentially constitute an ontology, which is developed in more detail in the next section he is working on. With the “Toy Factory” (2021) Papailiakis – who is a master of the technical part of painting – solves the problem of large scale, size. As the artist comments: “How can I make an oil painting myself, without helpers, without anyone else touching it? What is my limit in this regard? And this project is a good step for what I consider to be my limit”. The title of the painting, which consists of four parts with total dimensions of 4×3.5 meters, balances the biblical reference “I began to make the fifth day of creation where God creates the fish and birds. But because all this is biblical – I’m in the biblical circle – I was seeking to find a title that would take me out of this feeling, of this area or meaning” says Papailiakis.

In addition to “Toy Factory”, the exhibition includes ten oil paintings from 2020-21, each measuring 2×2 meters. Their titles are not captured a posteriori but arise while the artist is working on the works: Fishing; Hypnos; Female figure with bent rod; Two figures; Night; The Sunset at the Palace; Boy with a Balloon reads a Book; Life in the Countryside; The Hour of the Sun; The Magician’ s Time; and The Aquarium. “What I really like about these works and which I clarify”, adds Papailiakis, “is a way to be descriptive in the title and general in the image. That is, how can one create an image that is much wider than the title suggests? I don’t want there to be a coincidence of the title and the image. I would like it to be in a dialogue”.

In the painting “The Magician’ s Time”, the artist paints a warrior accompanied by his ‘ship’, a water carpet that could also be a fish or a boat. Papailiakis has captured the warrior in a moment of movement while he leans downwards. As he himself reveals, in this painting there is the influence of the sculptor Alexander Calder, that is, a game with the balances, something which interests him a lot in this series of works. In each work of this section, there is the relationship of the figure with objects. And in each work, there is always a horizon depicted in different ways. “It’s a very fundamental part of this work. In other words, all this goes somewhere because horizon means soil/ground. Watery, earthy, I don’t know, but soil/ground,” says the artist. Indicatively, in “The Aquarium”, which refers to Noah’s Ark, the figures observing the cetacean (?) above their heads they step on such a horizon-soil/ground.

The paintings in the exhibition are complemented by three large drawings (“Mother of the Sun,” “Boy with Butterfly,” “Homeless”) worked with pencil on paper, belonging to the series “The Shape of the Sky” (2021), and a sculpture from 2022. The black-and-white drawings, which resemble stamps, reveal a creator who deeply understands the potential of the line (in shaping volumes) and has a keen sense of balance. On the other hand, the sculpture “Six Studies for the Cycladic Solid” may have been realized in 2022 but has been worked on for about 25 years. The project consists of two long narrow wooden tables on which six 40x30x30cm glass boxes are placed. In essence, with this sculpture, Papailiakis captures in three dimensions the analogical system with which he works his paintings. Each box, which has the same dimensions but different partitions and markings, are versions of this system. For the artist-creator of these images, system means “something in relation to something else. A height relative to a width. A depth relative to a nearby point. This is a system in my head”. The transparency and fragility of the glass boxes seem to be part of this system. Everything hangs on a thread, on a delicate balance. Closer to the work of a conceptual artist rather than a painter, the Six Studies on the Cycladic Solid confirm the relationship of the artist with The Enigma of the Hour. “These paintings are not made if you are not conceptual, if you have not understood the two-dimensional space, the conceptual dimension of the painting space, of the two dimensions. The horizontal and vertical. These works are composition. That is, they come from the analysis. And I have the pleasure of being able to compose. Because I could only stick to the analysis”, states emphatically the artist.

Papailiakis’ exhibition at Parnassos reveals the system of an artist who is ready to take on the big scale. The images he presents are original and -dare we say- new. “They are original, I don’t know if they are new”, Papailiakis is quick to clarify. “But being original is not of little importance. New means durable, it means things that will be tested when we are gone”. For the time being, let us be content with the contemplative images that we have in front of us.

Christoforos Marinos

Art historian and curator