Solo Exhibition "Dessert" Opening Night

Τhe solo painting exhibition “DESSERT” by Nikos Siskos, presents a new body of work that focuses on the concept of desire and its relationship with beauty and the uncanny.

One of the most penetrating portraitists of his generation, the painter approaches dessert not as a gastronomic delight, but as a concept. It has a character of provocation, play, almost a slight sacrilege: a sweet sin sought with full awareness of its duration, a moment that is detached from the seriousness of the rule.

In his works, human figures appear holding sweets, while insects, animals and paradoxical elements move around them that disrupt the visual balance. The sweet coexists with the threatening, the attractive with the unfamiliar. The pleasure is not presented innocently, it contains tension and inner turmoil. Siscos utilizes a meticulous, almost obsessive realism that draws from the Western tradition of painting, enriched with pop color references, to undermine beauty. The “beautiful” acts as a bait for the gaze: it attracts the viewer, only to lead him into an experience where detail reveals cracks, deviations and underground threats. His figures do not project themselves in front of us to communicate. They are faces that seem to wear their own image as one would wear a mask.