Orbital Objects
Chandris
Every exhibition of Pantelis Chandris is unique and different. If we look closer we recognize invisible threads which connect the individual works with each other and in a way act as the continuation of the previous exhibition and, possibly, as the introduction of the next one.
In “Orbital Objects”, Pantelis Chandris produces an installation that is the reflection of a universal reference. It is a visual Cosmos, in the earliest interpretation of the term; in other words, it is a Universe in which an oceanic feeling wanders, the awe of the unknown, the infinite and the inconceivable. The works, therefore, are part of an orbit; a movement that neutralises time and renegotiates the meaning of the present. The artist defines it as an “atypical planetary garden”, where sculptures and paintings act as rotating objects. They orbit around the exhibition's main sculpture: a white, frozen and motionless flame reminiscent of the inextinguishable, yet silent flame of monuments and statues. Four more flame-references provide the connective tissue with the rest of the works. These are the “phryctoriae”; a means of transmitting messages, as with the torches that were used in ancient times.
Pantelis Chandris' themes move around pairs and contrasts: shadow and light, pictorial depiction and sculptural form, fragmentation and reconstitution, white-black, soft-hard, frozen-warm. One of them is the shadow that stands in opposition to light and also as an independent, autonomous element which constitutes a separate being. This becomes evident in the “still life”, where the shadows do not merely depict the trace, but exist in parallel with the bodies of the dead animals. The dead hare, a work after Otto Scholderer*, reappears intact, as a white body lying on the ground-floor, between the works. The white colour connects it with the white flames; its posture, however, oscillates between being and not being.
Pantelis Chandris’ Universe is sheltered in the gallery, but it is not confined. Its limits are determined by the viewers’ associations, perceptions, memories and references.