INTERVIEW: Pantelis Chandris

Raking up my memory, results the finding that my acquaintance with Pantelis Chandris and his artwork counts as many years as I am in Journalism, not in art media but one year more, since then I watch the work of one of the most serious and low-profile artists, who does not like to shout and to impress, even if uses color gold as you will find in the following interview, for survival… in a world… in between… in the intermediate space and time… between heaven and earth… liable to be incurred even the dream…

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Panteli’s Chandris Archive

Mr. Chandris in your series of artworks entitled “Stealth”, we notice that you use survival blankets, which are double-sided and depending on the side is the use of them. Why you pitch a levitating tent from this material? Not only the tent, but also the remaining artworks hover, what it means, the levitation, the intermediate space and time created, there in between…
The levitation responds to a challenge that has to do with the investigation of the existence of an intermediate space. The version of habitation of an area located in the “In between”. To find a place between the terrestrial and celestial topology. The concept of habitation is expressed here by a lightweight construction made from the material that the survival blankets manufactured. The construction has the form of a camping tent. A temporary, transportable shelter, a tent that due to the material with which it is constructed, automatically makes its residents survivors.
What means for you, the glow and the power emitted by this media, beyond the purely practical part in conceptual level?
It is a very special surface under certain conditions emits an eerie glow. It made me to recall a verse of Parmenides “Νυκτιφαές περί γαίαν αλώμενον αλλότριον φως”, in a free verbalization, refers to the light that shines at night and wanders around the Earth, coming from the extraneous. From the same media is expressed, another sculpture of this exhibition. The pelt of a deer and this because as pointed out by R. Calasso “Death into light, is the last moment of clarity”. This media is potentially a second habitable skin, while reflecting the same time absorbs energy. Is a skin, a limit, which due its properties, provides to its resident the possibility of viewing from inside to outside but at the same time prohibits the contrary.
Simultaneously with the installations, you create sculptures incorporating elements from nature, without being obvious. In contrast, to the black and white video that project a delicate creature like the deer, on the verge of life and death. It is the nature itself our ally or enemy and are we in harmony-dimension or in complete estrangement? (With the term nature, I mean everything is contained as physical and emotional functioning).
The entire narrative of this exhibition, unfolds in the Outside. In a nocturnal landscape that conceals, but at the same time reveals. A Nature that is not the garden of the human existence, but a great diversity of which we are just a tiny part. The existence appears here as a noble prey. A 30’’ video entitled “A moment nothing” starring a bewildered deer, discusses the meaning of the incidence, the moment through its duration. In this minimum fractional time, which is instantaneous, the distress of the understanding of the incidence seems almost everlasting, compared with a parallel space and time, which continues to flow ignoring this event.
Invisible-Weakness-Denial: are some of the key elements that concern you and negotiate in this series of artworks, would you please explain to us what they mean and how they affect you?
The title of the Exhibition is “Stealth”. This word is used both in everyday life and in modern war industry to define an action that is done covertly, surreptitiously, in secret. It describes an act that is difficult or impossible to detect. I use the term stealth, to express in a sense an invisibility. Our inability or refusal to detect some things, but in parallel our need to create some others thinks to become potentially ourselves invisible. The morphology of the tent, and the plaster sculptures that exist in the exhibition, have emerged from stellar formations and obey a strict geometric building capacity. I would say that at a large degree follow the structural logic, at least in terms of structure, used by the war industry, to create “invisible” vehicles.
Are your projects resulting from the modern polemic situation that has conquered our time and has changed face, such as the acts, the positions and the recent painful events?
The use of the survival blanket arises from a need to highlight the current socio-political situation, but also this material through its significations, expresses the constant and perpetual survival condition of human existence. A condition that is reinforced by the events of recent years and realized many times with unprecedented painful, at least for our generation way. Wrapped people with survival blankets, we frequently see in the mass media. Whether they are shipwrecked immigrants or victims of disasters. This material is a surface beneath which you can protect yourself. It is in a way a place and serves my research in relation to how to express the shelter. A meaning that concerns me in recent years and I manage it with different morphoplastic ways.
Do you feel that the sociopolitical environment, in which we live today, is in between – just as your artworks? Do they reflect the social reality?
I would say that the sociopolitical environment in which we live today, it is not located in between but in nowhere. The vision of a Europe of Citizens seems now utopia. The series of the artworks that I have presented in recent years, “The man is an island” in 2010 and “Matter of faith” in 2013 arise and reflect this whole situation. They are not illustrations, They are artworks, fabrications, lies, that may answer some truths.

 

First Publication: www.dreamideamachine.com
© Interview – Efi Michalarou

Info: ‘’Stealth’’, Elika Gallery, 27 Omirou Str., Athens, Duration: 5/3-18/4/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat: 12:00-16:00, www.elikagallery.com