Iris gallery is pleased to present August, Alexandros Simopoulos’ first exhibition with the gallery, which introduces a new body of paintings and works on paper. The works presented here have been produced in isolation mode during the past two years between Greece and Switzerland. Their color palette, subject matter and materials hold the marks of their geographical making: that of rural Valais in the Swiss Alps and coastal Attica and the Cyclades in Greece. The natural landscape becomes here the backdrop where Simopoulos’ open-ended shοrt stories evolve. Soil, rocks, the sea, the moon and the sun are all recurring symbols. Painted unaffectedly in a flat manner and with a euphoric color palette that resembles children’s drawings, the works employ humor and immediacy creating an accessible, comfortable and safe space for his protagonists.

The intentional lack of perspective and the banality of the everyday and the familiar, bring to mind Greek folk and outsider artists which have been a great source of inspiration for the artist. Like them, Simopoulos employs organic elements for his paintings such as raw linen, in reference to ‘liopana’, the traditional cloths used to harness the olives. Mermaids, human bodies, seascapes and trees attest to a world that lives in harmony with nature. In Simopoulos’ paintings the human body exists in correlation with the natural landscape or it becomes itself the actual landscape. Breasts, torsos and vulvas merge with the sun or the moon rising, revealing a tender, carefree and affectionate cosmos.

The works as a whole could be read as a fragmented summer diary exploring personal feelings and experiences, the mythology of the Greek summer, Greek identity, nature, leisure time and reflection on the body and need for intimacy. On a collective level, Simopoulos’ works are a story of emotions, anxieties and uncertainty and the potential they hold for change. Created during the pandemic and in an escapist mood, they emphasize the

importance of observation through the deceleration of time and everyday life. Informed by a sense of optimism, they highlight a contemporary sensibility and ways of reacting to changes and tensions. Simopoulos combines fantasy and figuration inventing his own unique language in order to deal with uncertainty, existential fears and the traumatizing shift of the relation between humans and nature. For the sense of belonging, of embracing change and vulnerability becomes the starting point for building something new.