With a palimpsestic artistic style, with personal meanings and collective memories, Alekos Kyrarinis deals with a complex, strictly personal quest. The “dragon”, symbol of evil, dominates in his artistic language. From classical Greek mythology, dragons have frightened, threatened, and destroyed until they meet up with the redeemer, the liberator in the form of a hero, a bold man, a saint. The dragon is an allusion to ancient mythical beasts, the Medusa and the Lernaean Hydra; but also to the serpent of the original sin, the dragon-slaying Byzantine saints, the winged reptile-temptation of the hermit holy men and monks, the “accursed serpent” of Karaghiozis, the dragon of folk songs and tales.

“Vigilant Heart”, a wish, a prayer and an objective, is the achievement of the struggle against evil, cunning and wickedness. Faith, Orthodoxy, as a living experience, appears through recognisable symbols, all of them the product of experience, both spiritual and fleshly. The senses come alive with the iconography, the chants, the candles and frankincense, Holy Communion and the antidoron. The dragon is exiled through faith, virtue prevails, the soul becomes calm, the heart “becomes vigilant”.