To Trito Mati (The Third Eye)
Antonakis
Stelios Karamanolis
Panos Tsagaris
October 18 - November 15, 2019
Opening Reception October 18th 6-9 pm
To Trito Mati, the third eye.
In Buddhism, the third eye symbolizes the entry of higher consciousness. It has been used to describe a sensory between the two halves of the brain, a portal to enlightenment and as a reference to the Pineal gland, which produces Serotonin, Melatonin and controls the body’s internal clock. This invisible eye unlocks the unseen, allowing our species to render deeper knowledge beyond our waking reality, a remedy to our myopic earthly senses.
The presented artists share the desire to peer through the lens of the third eye, to open their artistic selves to complex realities and mysteries of life, myth and consciousness.
These investigations manifest themselves into visual language utilizing mysticism and purification in the paintings of Panos Tsagaris. The Trito Mati activated in the god/man spirits inhabits the works of Stelios Karamanolis. Our circadian rhythms, and experience of myth and allegory, are explored in the passage of Antonakis’s portal. These three artists place great value in respecting an intuition for the beyond, a bond to the existential, an internal link to the heavens.
About the Artists
Antonakis (b.1978) was born and resides in Athens, Greece. He studied painting and photography at the Athens School of Fine Art, and Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL. Antonakis is a multidisciplinary artist, concentrating in painting, and working in collage, photography, ceramics and video. His work is exhibited in Greece, throughout Europe, North & South America, and Korea.
Antonakis reimagines and plays with stories, allegories and ideas from Greek myths, and the explicit and tangential relationship to modern and contemporary film and television. Antonakis seeks to explore the ever changing perceptions of myth as it changes through time, and is consumed into the mind’s memory and collective consciousness.
Stelios Karamanolis (b.1977) was born in Athens, Greece, and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. Recent solo shows include As we gather. Fast, tireless, quiet at The Flatland Gallery, Amsterdam 2017; Parallel Second at The Breeder Playroom, Athens 2017; Self Hypnosis at Kunstbuero, Vienna 2017; The Failure of Will at Can Christina Androulidaki Gallery, Athens 2014; An artist without a concept is like a traveler without a road map at Kunstraum Schauplatz, 2014 Vienna.
Recent group exhibitions include Athens and its periphery in regards to contemporary painting at The Breeder Playroom, Athens 2017; A Highly Dazed World at Daily Lazy Projects, Athens 2017; Idiopolis, Frontviews Temporary at State of Concept, Athens, 2016; Chez eux: unseen Collections at CirCuits & Currents, Athens 2016; The same sky at The Lepsien Art Foundation, Dusseldorf, 2016.
His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Leap, Artpapers and This Is Tomorrow.
Panos Tsagaris (b.1979, Athens, Greece) lives and works in New York. His artistic practice has always been informed by spiritual explorations and occult curiosities. He is interested in exploring the idea of "transformation" as it appears in different mystical traditions and mythologies, and how this transformation materializes itself in contemporary life, and most importantly in today's global socio-political matrix. He strives to capture the fragile connection between the seen and the unseen. Tsagaris has exhibited at the Bozar Museum, the Belvedere Museum, the Casino-Luxembourg, the Palais de Tokyo, the Deutsches, the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, the Flag Art Foundation in New York, the DeCordova Museum, the Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art, as well as at the Canakkale Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Belli Gallery is the exhibition vehicle for art dealer and nomadic gallerist Jonathan Belli. This is the third collaboration between Belli and furniture designer Will Kavesh, his partner Nicole Cornell, and their company Token. Token’s workshop and gallery space are located in the historic Beard and Robinson Stores, built in the 1860s along the Hudson River in Red Hook Brooklyn, NY.
BELLI x TOKEN
481 VAN BRUNT ST, #9A
BROOKLYN, NY 11231