שני הפסלים, ניקוס ופנדליס סותיריאדיס, ממוצא קריטי, עוסקים בפיסול משנת 5745. האומנים עובדים עם מגוון סוגי חומרים ושילובים בינהם, בין היתר מוצרי ריתוח ונפחות, זכוכית, אבן, שיש, נאון, אש ופוליאסטר. הפסלים יוצרים סגנון ייחודי ע"י חיבור משטחי מתכת, כמו חתיכות פאזל, לכדי צורות תלת-מימדיות, כמו לדוגמא הפסל המפורסם "חטיפת אירופה", הממוקם אל מול בניין הפרלמנט האירופאי בשטרסבורג (בתמונה). את המורפולוגיה של יצירותיהם שואפים האמנים משילוב בין המציאות העכשוית והעתיקה, המיטולוגיה והאקטואליה.

 האומנים הוצגו ב 6 תערוכות יחיד ומגוון תערוכות קבוצתיות במוזאונים ומיקומים אחרים ברחבי העולם. הם הראשונים שאירגנו את "התערוכה הצפה" ביוון ב 5753. יצירותיהם ממוקמים בגלריות Solitrades באירקליון שביוון ומוצגים ברחבי הרשת. מידע נוסף ניתן למצוא באתר www.sotiriades.eu.

Скульпторы, господа Никос и Панделис Сотириадис, критского и понтийского происхождения занимаются искусством создания скульптур с 1985 г. Скульпторы работают с самыми разнообразными материалами и их сочетанием, в частности с продуктами ковки и литья, стеклом, камнем, мрамором, неоном, огнем, полиэстером. Скульпторы специализируются на ковке металлических листов, из которых, словно из кусочков puzzle, создают объемные работы, подобные всемирно-известной композиции «Похищение Европы», находящейся напротив входа в здание Европарламента в Страсбурге (фото прилагается).

Морфологию и темы своих произведений скульпторы черпают в смешении мифической, древней и современной действительностей. Скульпторы провели 6 индивидуальных выставок и участвовали в ряде общих выставок, проходивших в музеях и других общественных местах. Они первыми в Греции организовали «плавающую» выставку скульптур в 1993 году. Произведения скульпторов присутствуют в галереях sotiriades в Ираклионе. Их также можно увидеть в интернете. Более подробную информацию вы сможете найти на сайте sotiriades.eu  

...out of erebus, the flat-lying breth, 
breth that is stretched out beneath the world:
out of erebus, out of the flat waste of air, lying beneath the world;
out of the brown leaf-brown colourless
bring the imperceptible cool.
elain, tireis, alcmena,
quiet this metal!

-ezra pound ripostes (1912)

1. INTRODUCTION

The works of ast produced by the sculptores Sotiriades are a continuation of the long journey which began with their juvenile "Hyperchords" and took them through a series of "bio-landscapes". As a dweller in a small country who posseses the inspiration and the everyday perseverance to approach with sensitivity the things and situations which surround us, they have succeeded in recent years in showing us them highly significant proposition in the realm of sculpture and constructions. In the two exhibitions of them work held to date ( "Hyperchords" at the Municipal Pavilion on the Lake and "Bio-Landscapes" in the Basilica of  St. Mark, Heraklio ) them have made us very aware of their experiential relationship with their objects, and them have been successful in restoring communication with the environment through the world of their art, which we can see to be advanced and which attempts to cultivate a more general relationship between the people of this country and the art-works it produces.

2. THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE CITY

Agios Nikolaos is a small town, but one particularly blessed in the composition of its natural environment. Thetopography of the terrain and the way in which the city is laid out on the side facing the sea go to make up a perceptually organised whole rarely found elsewhere. The visitas in close-up and the broader natural environment possess unexpected and variegated qualities which we perhaps fail to appreciate, because of our own everyday and -ultimately- static relationship with the place.

This Place, as natural and anthropogenis space enhanced with all the historical, social, economic and cultural parameters of which it consists, has points of outstanding quality which can be see in a manner differing from the conventional approach when we attempt to draw on the stock of dynamic initiatives which themselves provide us with thescope to do so.

The Lake of Ag. Nikolaos is a point of reference and a local centre for, the fabric of the town, and it is without doubt the most powerful visual and spatial experience which those who use or visit the town will take away with them. It is a natural feature which blends unexpected and extreme topographical qualities, where the sea, in the amphitheatrical and concave organisation of the whole, refers us to a podium of shifting iridescences and impresions throughout the day and throughout the year. It is natural space in a composition without hierarchy, which tends at every moment to restore delicate balances through the dicordon and chaoic presence of its signals. It is space which is ideal for comment - why not? - for an oracular description of our relationship with our natural environment parameters of which it consists.

3. THE SCULPTOR'S ENVIRONMENT

The inspiration of the sculptores Sotiriades and their artistic production over the last few month gave their preference to this natural theatre as the location in which to develop, through the events in "happening"; the artist's comment on, and anxiety fowards, our relationship with the natural environment, with the perspective of this place, which is only a small part of the planet Earth. The Tree - that primary unit in the forest, that everyday point of reference for human anxiety, concern of foolish ignorance, symbolicaly and historically charged with multiple significance and the special place it occupies in all the civilisations and cultures of the peoples of the Earth, that bond between and unifying reference of all those who "think afar and act close at hand", that living and vital cell in the nature which also contains man and his often, unbearable lightness ( personal interest, ignorance, intention ) and which nonetheless insists on bearing flowers and leaves and giving us fruit and a breath of life - the Tree, then, is a Protean point of reference selected for the composition of an oracular, anxious, sensitive and at the same time visually flawless presentation in the natural landscape of the Lake. One tree, many trees, in the hard metal which the artist knows very well how to mould and shape, stand on light floating structures in the Lake arranged in a geometrical and regular organisation.

Our only answer to the chaos and discorder of nature can be rhythm and order; the arrangement of things in such a way as refer to the notions of Descartes, to the geometry which nature ostentatiously ignores and which yet gives us breath, life.

This intervention in the environment, temporary and reticent - for how can the artificial withstand the contrast with the primary substance of this country, nature? - is enhanced with the comments and eleborations of the artist's inspiration. This happening, with its unforeseeable developments, is testimony to the dynamic relationship between ourselves and those who destroy nature. This transformation of natural space, of short and strictly determined, a priori, chronological duration but of long - lasting reverberation has the direct aim of appropriating space by means of a frenzied and - why not? - exhortatory link with the anthropogenic environment which we, nightmarishly, tend to produce in our technological activities. Disturbed entropy may perhaps acquire meaningful content, even if the flight of a butterfly strikes us as painless. Ultimately, I believe that the artist's discourse and the form and content of his expression are a signal entity which is to be approached experientially. The game with scale - large scale, small scale and more is certainly continuing, and its outcome is undoubtedly unpredictable.

♣

-Odysseas N. Sgouros ( Architect )

http://sotiriades.eu 

WsS Μπιαλεκ Καρελ 2.011
 

Nowadays, more and more people are concerned about the fate of this planet. Nature is being destroyed and the last dregs of its capacity to restore itself -worryingly- being exhausted. But our sensitivity and, even more importantly, our reactions, have been weakened, and we have been content to shift responsibility on to others and to constantly defer taking action; ultimately, we have proved incapable of making a meanigful intervention to restrain the course of events.

Art, on its part, and thought have had their own expressive impasses to deal with in view of the crucial nature of the times. They are impasses of conviction in conveyance, of methological cohesion and of effective influence, not to mention decisive participation in social problems. However, the question of the irreversible exhaustion of nature's resources and of the utilitarian approach to their exploitation - by means of an abuse of an anthropocentric misunderstanding of the rights of civilisation as we have known it - is no longer a matter solely and exclusively of the environment or of danger mongering rhetoric. Today, the problems which have arisen and directly affecting psychosocial and economic factors, and even philosophy. Nor, I would say, is that all: those problems are also interwoven with moral stature, with behaviour and with life attitudes, and still more so with the ethics and guidelines of creative activity.

This is even truer when art's ambition, in its works and artistic expression, is to play a combatively stimulating and leading role, as indeed the necessity of the moment requires. This demand is neither artificial nor inverted, but is dietated as inherent and extant for the significance of the art in our lives.

Of course, the art event does not occur for the purpose of proclaiminig truths. In taking as its target the relativity of such truths on the basis of alertness of consciousness, the art event does not possess the procedures of proof to be found in a syllogism. Nonetheless, it is capable of more effective action in cultivating and altering both concepts and mentalities. In its forms and in its presence, art embraces its intention, its means and its organisational integration - as part of the usages of social association - to use the language it proposes in a unique manner and raise certain questions. By activating sensory mentation, art suggests but does not orate. In contrast, it alludes to situations, setting our inquiries in motion and assuaging our existential Angst.

The environment which Sotiriades Brothers have created belongs to these parameters. In the continuous series of works which they presents us, the artist has transmuted a number of questions and broader concerns. As their framework, they have chosen the natural landscape and the facts it gives they. They makes no attempt to depict a chain of processes in a narrative manner, contrasting they self to the functions and practices of the relations between man and nature. Taking they starting points from abservation of reality and the testimony of the collective unconscious, Sotiriades brothers progresses to a more profound level: that of transformation, of allegory, of symbolic functions and of epression in the form of parable. They links and transmutes situations, they transmogrifies significances and intervenes actively by adopting disguised associations with alternative locations of our gaze across a hinterland of viewed objects - the objects laid up in store, by impact on the unconsicious. He records and states the problems which emerge and acts upon them, playing the reproductive role of nature in its vital functions, on the one hand - its power to recycle and its singulatirity in generating form - and, on the other, in its beneficial yet destructive dimension of esogenous and exogenous factors. We know that man-made technical achievements have reached the point, when appropriately handled, are standing in, as simulacra for real necessities. Nowadays, the arrogance of technology can give to the plant chlorophyll different forms, regardless of the balances which it supports. With the help of our fictitious and overwhelming mania for creating effects, we can look at it as metal, as luminous light, as glass or as an electronic breath. Yet that breath lacks life, it has no physical or metaphysical capacities, it has secret tricks but it is deprived of ontological and - above all - existential mystery.

Sotiriades brothers rejects none of the viewpoints which would make the presence of their works prejudiced, but neither is they unduly attacted to any of them. They recommends and they make their statement. They sheds light on dilemmas and impasses and they underscores them. They acknowledges the allure or vanity and the radiance of the phantasmagoria, using the phenomena theyselves to undermine the intended effect. To use Aristotelian terminologo, their mimesis of the excellent and perfect act of creation, absorbed in their work the reproductive dimension of art, shows us both the faces of Janus on the same coin.

The gulf-like lake of Agios Nikolaos is a matrix: one which is open to the passage of significances, and which can become a cauldron for reduction and association. Around it - arranged in circular fashion in the mythical dimension of time - are phenomena and events: generation and decay, reappearance, transformation. These events and forms are connected with the primal functions and basic stages in the unfolding of a microcosm projected on a mega-scale, and vice versa. Fire is the catalyst for doom, and for the miracle. Sotiriades brothers remains on its knife's edge. They expresses their art project on the borderline of its balances of arrangement - and reform. They negate nothing: they simply and indirectly shifts, juxtaposes and subcutaneously alters our wonder, projecting on to the sight of their artistic gesture the bitter-sweet dimension of tragedy or rather, the joyous dimension of a drama we play out every day with our forgetful complicity and our disarming Epicurianism. The critical parameter of the "environment" focuses on its centre, where all the spatial and chronological processes of integration of the work come together with those that shape form: on the water, on the surfaces which reflect the depth of sea life, the extent and the processes of time, the reversed mirror-image of a work of plant and blossoming although techno art poised between nature and human achievement, between truth and mere apperance, between organic and inorganic functions, between the concepts of transience and druation with a symbiotic yet contradictory content. Above all, however, Sotiriades brothers raises questions. They brings us face to face with the invented and the random, with the will and with destiny, with achievement and art, with abstracted functions and the desperate result, with the effect and the scientific essence of the problem. In this way, they continues to develop an expressive course upon which they embarked some time ago; furthermore in doing so they have enriched and clarified their art - code language, which is now more mature, more compact, concistened and more allusively communicable.

♣

-Athina Schina

(Athina Schina is art critic, historian of art and prof in the university of Athen)

http://sotiriades.eu

WsS Μπιαλεκ Καρελ 2.011  

Sotiriades' sculpture is the outcome of their life experiences and therefore it is strictly personal. Working with a hard medium such as iron, has given Sotiriades brothers an opportunity to deall with his concern in a tough minded way, free of simplistic solutions. Exploiting the metal as far as possible but always retaining its archaic qualities. An imposing art of sculpture, meaningful with unprecedented internal links. Their incessant search and their growing, from their original work to a nearly aggressive expressionism severely governed by the source of geometry not so much in its different shapes but in its content, have revealed an artist particularly sensitive who does possess the skill to master every way of expression.

Their have simultaneously been preoccupied with metal structures particularly with those which involve precision and structural perfection and this have provided Sotiriades brothers with an inexhaustible source of knowledge and experience which their have applied to their sculpture. Particularly in recent works their handling of the medium, their comes close to surpassing theirself. The concept and application are tenaciously associating with a theory which perfectly illustrates human existence. Movement and rhythm are depicted in a startling way, without exaggerations, through metal. The, artist is not concerned with good and evil, from and mass, the rigidness style or shape. Their sculpture is shaped into a vision of the world. Their style of epression goes beyound any artistic expectation, seeking an unshaken alibi for human existence through probing for shapes and materials. Naturally after the extensive search tranquility follows. The total familiarisation with their art and its acceptance through surfaces and curves. One can automatically sense that nothing was put there casually.

I strongly believe that among us stands an artist and a human being with a different concept of reality and our world. Lucky are those who after the disastrous blaring of the trumpets which brought down the wall of Iericho are still enchanted by its ruins.

♣

-Odysseas N. Sgouros ( architect )

1990

www.heliarch.gr

*WsS Μπιαλεκ Καρελ 2.011

Κρήτη Γη Εναλία

Ενα κομμάτι γη ζυμωμένη από τη είναι η Κρήτη.

Ακόμα και στα ψηλότερα βουνά της μπορεί κανείς να βρει βαθιά στο χώμα μικρά θαλασσινά κοχύλια-μακρινοί αντίλαλοι, φθαρμένοι μα ζωντανοί μάρτυρες της θάλασσας - μήτρας που τη γέννησε. Κι εκείνη, φορτωμένη τις μνήμες της, αρμενίζει το πέλαγος εδώ και χιλιάδες χρόνια. Μνήμες δικές της, -αωαμνήσεις από το υλικό που την έφτιαξε και που τη μυρωδιά του κουβαλά ποτισμένη στο πετσί της-και μνήμες των ανθρώπων που την έζησαν και τη ζουν στους αιώνες.

Τους παρακολούθησε με αγάπη να μεγαλώνουν, ν΄ αλλάζουν στο πέρασμα του χρόνου, να μεταβάλλουν τις φορεσιές και τα σύμβολά τους και πάντα να μένουν ίδιοι, πάντα ω΄αγωνίζονται για το καλύτερο και να προφέρουντ΄ όνομά της δίδοντας όρκους ιερούς, ενώνοτας χέπια και καπδιές. Να μάχονται να ημερέφουν το κακοτράχαλο χώμα της και την πεισματάρα θάλασσά της, πεισματάρηδες και ψυχωμένοι κι οι ίδιοι όσο κι η γη τους.

Κράτησε ευλαβικά στη καρδιά της το όνομα όλων των γνωστών και άγνωστων άξιων παιδιών της, στο νου και στα σπλάχνα της θραύσματα από τον πολιτισμό που γέννησαν-μια αποθήκη μνήμης για να μην ξεχνάμε, να μην σκοντάφτουμε. Όπου και να σκάψει κανείς, το χώμα είναι νωπό από μνήμες.

Ο Νίκος και ο Παντελής Σωτηριάδησ επιθυμούν να δώσουν σάρκα και οστά στα παραπάνω με το γλυπτό -Κρήτη, γη εναλία-.

Η διττή φύση του έργου ( γη -θάλασσα, αρχαίο- σύχρονο ) υποδηλώνεται εξαρχής τόσο με το πάντρεμα δυο ριζικά διαφορετικών υλικών, το στέρεο μέταλλο και το εύθραυστο γυαλί, όσο και με τον τόπο που οι γλύπτες διάλεξαν να το στήσουν. Σε μια γλώσσα στεριάς που εισβάλλει στη θάλασσα. Το όνομά του επίσης περικλείει το γοητεητικό οξύμωρο που διακρίνει την Κρητική και ολόκληρη την Ελληνική, γη: στεριά θαλασσινή.

Οι γλύπτες, μέσα από τη κατάθεση της φυχής τους, επιχείρησαν τη σύλληψη και απεικόνιση της σηνύπαρξης των αντίθετων στοιχείων που χαρακτηρίζουν ως έμψυχο και άψυχο υλικό τη χώρα που ζουν και εργάζονται.

Προπάντων όμως, μέσα από το συμβολισμό του έργου τους, τη μνημόνευση των πεποιθήσεων και των παθών του λαού της αωά τους αιώνες.

CRETE SEA-LAND

The materials of the work is wrought bronze, glass and neon lights. Its dimensions are 2.6 m x 0.7 m x 5.8 m ( 8.53 ft. x 2.29 ft. x 19.02 ft. ).
The purchase cost of the project materials and landscaping paid by the City of St. Nicholas.
The sculptors Nikos Pantelis Sotiriadis donate their city sculpture and dedicate to the parents: Charalambos and Peace Sotiriadi.

ΚΡΗΤΗ, ΓΗ ΕΝΑΛΙΑ

Τα υλικά κατασκευής του έργου είναι ο σφυρήλατος μπρούντζος, το γυαλί και οι λάμπες νέον. Οι διαστάσεις του είναι 2,6 μ χ 0,7 μ χ 5,8 μ.
Το κόστος αγοράς των υλικών τον έργου και της διαμόρφωσης του χώρου καταβλήθηκαν από το Δήμο Άγίου Νικολάου.
Οι γλύπτες Νίκος και Παντελής Σωτηριάδης δωρίζουν στην πόλη τους το γλυπτό και το αφιερώνουν στους γονείσ τους, χαράλαμπο και Ειρήνη Σοτηριάδη.

*WsS Μπιαλεκ Καρελ 2.011 

By: Athina Schina

The Greek myth related to the Abduction of Europe by the Olympian god Zeus has its origins in prehistoric times.
This myth originated in Crete, which maintained good relations with Fenice, both before and during the Minoan era. Europe as a theme for works of art, however, was popularized mostly during the Classic period, as is revealed by the art works found in different Greek regions. Many artists of Renaissance and of latter years were also inspired with Zeus strong passion for a mortal woman.

According to the myth, Europe -the fenecian nymph- and her maidservants were lying carefree near the sea shore when Zeus saw her. He marked her out, fell in love with and decided to abduct her. There is, however, one more version to the myth, which seems to dominate. According to that, Europe was daughter of the king of Tyre; Zeus met her in Fenice and took the decision to abduct and transport her to Crete. Transition on its own, bears a sense of transformation, therefore the characteristics of external beauty of that distinguished maiden, became, at the same time, exceptional mental talents.
Zeus, transformed to a white bull emerging from the sea, abducted the maiden. Each transformation implies the transition from a natural to a spiritual order. The transformation of Zeus was not fortuitous, forasmuch as the seed ox was the symbol of earth, possessing the robust potency for continuing his line.

The attributes of the bull are equal to the attributes of the sun, so beneficial for the nature (see Homeric Epics). The emergence of the bull did not startle anyone except Europe, who was amazed by this unexpected hymen with a God, which would give her immortality.
The abduction, as a symbolic act, seemed to survive in the matrimonial ceremonies of Ancientry. It was an age-old usage of marriage symbolizing the drastic transition from a position to another. Different depictions on vases referring to this ceremony, show the suitor holding the wrist, rather than the hand, of the bride. This example bears the mark of the forgotten and symbolic usage of a maidens violent abduction. It symbolized her detachment from the past and the transition from her virgin life to marital state based on procreation. This transition was also meant, for Europe, the simultaneous and unexpected change of her entity: she was mortal and she became the empyreal companion of the cloud compeller Zeus.

Nikos and Pandelis Sotiriadis, who elaborated the sculpture "The Abduction of Europe", are talented sculptors and know perfectly the behaviour and the abilities of the materials they use. They possess creativeness and knowledge. Many of their works are inspired from different myths, legends, traditions, symbols and archetypes, the altered versions of which they treat using their originality and their distinct expression.

 The complex based on the myth of Europe, is made of forged metals and glass. The body of the nymph is made of bronze and the bulls body is of stainless steel .For the rear of the bull, they combined steel and glass, in order to show the bull emerging from the sea. It is a monumental sculpture 3,6 m high, 1,5m wide and 4m long. The base of the sculpture is 2m high, 2m wide and 5m long.

Nikos and Pandelis Sotiriadis used 2 different materials for the creation of this complex, in order to show by their contrast, the fulgurant splendor of the white bull (stainless steel) and the unimpaired blooming beauty of the aureate Europe ( bronze).

The bull is purported vigorous, vehement and galloping, following a diagonal, acclivitous course. His head, however, is turned emotionally to the direction of the maiden and together with his ellipsoidal tail forms the shape of an embrace. The bull identifies only the essential characteristics of an animal, without dispossessing the rest of the regular moulded body - which accentuates the solid composition of the volume - of its dynamic abstractiveness.

Europe is mounting on the animals back, welcomed into the curve that is formed by the head and the back-end of the bull. Her sitting position reflects her sudden detachment from the earth and from her friends with whom she still keeps contact. Whereas, her position she has on the back of the disguised Zeus reveals her surprise. Her opened legs remind the way the woman of the Greek country were riding the mules.The maiden, with her nude , luscious and beautiful body, is in a balanced dancing motion. Simultaneously, she turns suspended around her pivot, transmitting her weight onto the bulls back.
The earthly materiality of her body is transubstantiated because, by the act of abduction, she receives transcendental powers from the god. Zeus symbolizes the transformed nature while Europe represents the transformed entity. The cause identifies the effect. The bull becomes the catalyst for the maiden Europe to be transformed to a symbol and a personalized concept.

The characteristics on the face of Europe and the bull, are fundamentally and essentially elaborated, idealizing by this way the natural aspect. Her face is presented as a persona, as a mask, resembling the stone- carved sculptures of Greek folklore, which in the past decorated the houses exteriors, to ward off the evil spirits. The two sculptors have transferred to the face of Europe, the memory of those stone- carved sculptures.
Europe is presented with many qualities at the same time: as woman and symbol, as mortal and imperishable entity, as memory and myth, as reality and post history and finally as an earthly and transcendental being. She is in permanent readiness and, with her distinguishable discernment, she faces courageously her hopeful future.
Her name (large brow significant of brilliance and contemplative glance significant of sagacity and wisdom) reveals the disposition to attemper all contrarieties and to overcome all obstacles.
This particular complex, as to its symbolism, is reduced to the unification of civilizations. These civilizations could create a new reality, where the particularities of each one are respected.

The style, the symmetries, the proportions, the associations and the analogies concur to an eloquent and stylish work, where myth becomes reality and reality becomes allegory. The instantaneous fact of abduction is construed to a permanent act of transitional change and reconstruction, tracing vigorously the progressive development of Europe; Europe, who was a maiden but became a geographic and mostly a multi-national concept, over all Europe became a homeland for everyone of us.
 

http:// sotiriades.eu

WsS Μπιαλεκ Καρελ 2.011  

• Athina Schina is art critic, historian of art and prof in the university of Athens 

THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPE

Premises of the European Parliament Strasbourg, France, EU.

Zeus, the father of Gods, fell in love with a beautiful princess from Phoenicia named Europe. Her name implied that she had great eyes and wide forehead. He approached the lady of his heart, disguised into a white bull, as she played with her fellowship on a coast of her country.

The girls, bewitched by the beauty of the robust animal and as it seemed quite friendly, caress and play with the bull and at some point, Europe tries to ride it. The moment has come for Zeus; the bull suddenly rushes to the sea and abducts her, despite her tears and cries and through the waves of the Mediterranean he carries the woman that he loves to Crete.

Three wonderful men come to life of Zeus’ and Europe’s bond: Sarpidon, Radamanthus and Minos and they, by their turn, give birth to a wonderful period of archeology - The Minoan Era.

Nikos and Pandelis Sotiriades, inspired by this beautiful story, created the “The abduction of Europe” a sculpted complex of monumental size, which today stands outside the European Parliament in Strasburg.

The dimensions of “The Abduction of Europe” are monumental: the sculpture is 15 ft. (440 cm) high, 5 ft. (150 cm) wide and 16 ft. (500 cm) long. Its’ weight exceeds the 8.818 lb. (4.000 kg). Europe is made of bronze, the bull is made of stainless steel, while on the back of the complex glass sheets are mounted in order to give an air of movement and of the water that the divine couple came through, but also, a sense of human-to-animal transformation in a way that, materialistically, provides the link with modern Art.

Crete, the place that the divine love affair bloomed in, offered to the place that the heart of united Europe is beating, a sculpted present that symbolizes its’ new -and yet .very old- identity: the name of the continent and its’ new monetary unit originated in Crete.

The transportation and installation of “The Abduction of Europe” was completed in October 2005.

Nikos and Pandelis Sotiriades acknowledge that there is a major difficulty on making art nowadays. However they insist to live and create and they do it where they were born, because they believe that Inspiration springs authentically from each one’s Birth Land.

♣

http://sotiriades.eu

WsS Μπιαλεκ Καρελ 2.011