From word to stone: Nikos Kanakis sculptures Gratitude in Naxian marble

First came the word, then came the thought that expanded the word, and then came the stone that anchored the thought. Nikos Kanakis’s accumulation examines the conception of Gratitude, a word that embodies a conception so mundane that it is seldom fixed the weight it deserves, until it is rendered successful stone, successful the axenic whiteness of acold Naxian marble.

Gratitude is connected astatine the Melina Merkouri Cultural Arts Centre, Athens where, Kanakis presents a bid of caller works, the ascendant worldly of which is the Naxian “crystal” marble. For Kanakis, Gratitude proposes a re-evaluation of the indispensable qualitative elements that pb to interior fulfilment and, by extension, to a sustainable society.

His use of marble, derived from surviving matter, is the ultimate look of this principle. Yet due to the fact that it has been so overused successful cemeteries, it carries a antithetic taste weight. He seeks to liberate it from the calumny of the grave, insisting that marble has a beingness within it that tin beryllium freed. He does this by creating modern forms that conspire with airy to either densify the stone oregon region its bulk, suggesting alternatively than afloat revealing the fig held within.

In Gratitude to the Sun, there is greater specificity: the sun rises, not sets, sending arrows of vigor to sustain life. Photo: Supplied

In gratitude to honorable people, for they teach us to swim successful wide water, the edges of a artifact of marble slice into translucency arsenic the quality signifier emerges. Kanakis is astatine his astir engaged when helium describes his process:

“The absorbing portion of the work is when you spot the shape—when you discard the rubbish and spot the signifier grow… that something starts to beryllium alive… and then you indispensable springiness enactment to the skin by slowly, slowly rubbing the body… and you’re acceptable to play with the airy and you spot the shadiness and you play with the personality.”

Marble becomes the good texture of youthful skin, a flash of movement, the folds of falling silk, a fleeting expression, oregon a breeze ruffling a lover’s hair.

Gratitude to Motherhood is where emotion and solidarity statesman and end. Photo: Supplied

Kanakis renders the substantial ethereal. His forms are simpler, much elemental, similar the Cycladic statues helium admires. They beryllium connected precision of curve and surface, allowing airy to walk through, glide across, oregon fracture into small crystalline reflections, making the work some playful and dynamic.

His gratitude to those who support us astir explicitly acknowledges its Cycladic roots, presenting a file of faces with evident uniformity that recedes into shadiness and resolves into individuality and difference. He is meticulous successful selecting each artifact of marble to springiness worldly look to his concepts; the wrong crystal content, helium notes, tin marque it lucifer plastic.

One tin admit this accumulation without being alert of Kanakis’s broader committedness to sustainable practice. He is simply a vegan—more precisely vegan, not vegetarian—refusing to nett from different surviving beings: if you emotion animals, you bash not devour them. He adjacent refuses honey, believing it deprives bees of their labour.

Gratitude to Animals, the exhibition’s lone figurative work, carves the caput of a cattle oregon bull successful stone, evoking some the animal’s solidity and Mesopotamian forms successful a telephone for respect toward different creatures. Photo: Supplied

Gratitude to Animals, the lone explicitly figurative work, carves the caput of a cattle oregon bull into stone. It conveys some the solidity of the carnal and echoes Mesopotamian forms, asking for respect successful our narration with different creatures. His much abstract Gratitude to the High Mountains, for there you observe the freshness within your soul situates the work successful a carnal and spiritual landscape, requiring an statement betwixt sculptor and viewer connected the truth of metaphor.

Born successful Athens, Kanakis has roots successful Crete and Naxos, where helium maintains his studio and gallery. Trained successful art, graphics and decoration, helium began his vocation successful advertizing arsenic an illustrator and award-winning creation director, aboriginal founding the Greenmind advertizing bureau focused connected greenish improvement and firm κοινωνικά responsibility. “People request nonstop interaction with nature, purity, innocence,” helium says. “The past world had each these.” His use of marble becomes a rebellion against the artificiality of the present.

The astir moving work is Gratitude to Motherhood, where emotion and solidarity statesman and end. Here, the metaphor is astatine its astir direct: an unambiguous rendering of the mother–child narration done purity of stone, airy and shadow, resulting successful unmistakable tenderness. He has nary children, something helium does not regret saying, “You are not escaped to accidental what you want if you person to look aft others.”

Born successful Athens with roots successful Crete and Naxos, Kanakis maintains his studio and assemblage there. Trained successful art, graphics and decoration, helium began arsenic an illustrator and award-winning creation manager earlier founding the Greenmind advertizing agency. Photo: Supplied

Yet there is simply a quiescent yearning successful this work, arsenic if for a representation imperfectly preserved. His Gratitude is universal, extending to poets who speak what hearts cannot, to friends who stay when everything collapses, to quality that gives the eyes purpose, and to emotion that makes us consciousness we alert while walking connected earth.

This universality becomes literal successful Gratitude to the Stars, a mixed-media work placing a fig astatine the centre of the cosmos, giving gravity to the stars themselves. In Gratitude to the Sun, there is greater specificity: the sun rises, not sets, sending arrows of vigor to sustain life.

It is the word, the thought, and the stone that unify this exhibition, celebrating the indispensable things that sweeten beingness and compensate for pain. By carving Gratitude into stone, Kanakis does not question permanence—because nary exists—but to amusement that beingness flows done galore forms. It leaves the content that if 1 could take a metamorphosis, it mightiness beryllium to go a glint within a atom of marble—alive, breathing, and shining.

Gratitude is presently connected astatine the Melina Merkouri Cultural Arts Centre

*Kiriaki Orfanos is simply a civilization and arts writer, and researcher, based successful Sydney, present travelling Europe, and regular contributor to Neos Kosmos.