The installation of his solo exhibition in the main hall of the Citronne Gallery has been completed. Pantely Chandri “Orbital Objects”. The translation of the name can be orbital objects, or objects in orbit in the sense that the word “orbit” has in astronomy: the path that a celestial body takes when it moves around another celestial body of greater mass due to gravity.

A kind of heavenly “garden” made up of sculptures, paintings and drawings challenges you to cross it. Like a landscape architect, the artist organized an exhibition-installation around the white “Torch” (2022), a structure resembling flames that adorn monuments to heroes and the fallen. Around the luminous center – the fire that gives life, “prevents oblivion”, as its creator says – black sculptures are launched, similar to creatures made of bone material, plaster, calcite, porcelain, ash. Chandris calls them “wanderers” rather than “planets”, emphasizing the constant movement, perhaps even the possibility of meeting through constant rotation.

A game “Orbital Objects” a sculptural installation, to which you can continuously add new bodies – planets, increasing their number. “The Chandris orbital objects are works of art that will be identified differently at each moment in time. Their peculiarity is that they are deeply imprinted in your subconscious and in your memory. You don’t forget them. And most importantly: they change the way you see nature, still life, landscape, but also the works of art themselves – and what they can offer the viewer, ”the historian notes in his text, in the exhibition catalog. art by Christophoros Marinos.

“Art is a very good way to express yourself elliptically, poetically; address things without naming them,” Pantelis Chandris says as we discuss completing the journey through this world of shadows he created. His research turned again to painting to study the transmission of shadows in the works of Giorgio Morandi, Francis Bacon and Edvard Munch, as well as in paintings depicting dead animals that appear as hunting trophies. A number of stellar bodies were added to this study. His work over the years has been marked by continuity and consistency. “There is a backbone around which my work is organized. Moving forward and seeing what happens, I see a connection with my main searches, ”he says. He experiments and develops, building a theoretical basis, in which each time he gives new expressive solutions.

Sculpting, I draw. And vice versa. What I’m mainly interested in is the form expression and its extensions.

What excites him most in his work? “Loss. Figurative language gave me the opportunity to get acquainted with him,” he says. “Do you express yourself more fully in sculpture or in painting?” We ask him. “I do not share them,” he replies. “Sculpting, I paint. And vice versa. What interests me most is the expression of form and its extension, the expansion of the two-dimensional space of painting into three dimensions, so that it becomes sculpture.”

Visual-intelligent? Rather an active visual artist – he presented 16 solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad – and at the same time a teacher – director of the 10th ASKT painting workshop. Teaching is a joy for him. “And at the same time, the commitment to return what the school gave me when I was a student,” he says. What was it; “Refuge. I no longer felt like a stranger in this world. Or better yet, I was with other weirdos.”

The laboratory where he teaches is busy. “Painting and drawing are fields from which many visual tools can be drawn,” he explains to his students. They just need to know that art begins where technique ends. He believes in physical contact with art. “Knowledge must be acquired by going to the source, traveling, looking for it in museums. Otherwise, the information is fictitious,” he concludes.

The Orbital Objects exhibition will run until June 24.