Echo and Narcissus
ECHO AND NARCISSUS by VASSILIS H.
Vassilis H.'s new solo exhibition “Echo and Narcissus” includes paintings and sculptures inspired by a modern interpretation of the original myth. Hedonism and sexuality, the idealized self-image, narcissism (the obsessive self-eroticism and the inescapable mental state it entails), the unfulfilled love and loneliness, are all implied through the grotesque and naive figures in the artist's works.
His antiheroes pose with a sense of complacency in front of the viewer's eyes. At times, the viewer peeps into the antiheroes’ private moments and invades the depths of their personal lives, in the same way that the social media promote and dismantle an unprecedented momentary invasion of private space through a smart phone screen.
Inspired by a rich photographic material from his personal collection, but also by images from the internet, Vassilis H. isolates and captures his protagonists with a mixture of humor and melancholy, as well as sarcasm and irony. Above all, with a genuine concern and affection for his antiheroes. Their vanity seeks acceptance, admiration and sometimes enviousness. His work is a social commentary on the modern aesthetics of the distorted image, on the fantasies, the arrogance, the obsessions and the psychoses of the individual towards the entity.
