In Argiris Rallias’ sculptures, the landscape, the earth, human beings and life are inextricably linked.
Argiris Rallias
Personal stories with collective value
Text: Αlexandra Koroxenidis
The work of Argiris Rallias (b. 1993) springs from experiences coming from his childhood and teenage years in the small island of Kythnos, where he grew up learning the hardships of genuine agricultural life, the wisdom of simplicity and the communal bonds. Behind each of his works one can trace the recalling of one of the many stories he used to hear from his grandfather, his grandmothers and his parents.
Without succumbing to nostalgia or the idealization of the past, but rather driven by the urge to honor some of its aspects, Argyris Rallias detects through his sculpture and his constructions the stance in life behind every story, reliving the narrations with the aim of spontaneously transforming their conceptual gist into an an aesthetic experience. First and foremost, he underlines the importance of rituality and of traditions that are not performed mechanically but rather gain substance through a grid of social attachments and morals. He focuses on human relations and the collective spirit, the interaction between human beings and the landscape, as well as on the imprints engraved on a particular topos by experiences and memories. He projects the timelessness of myths and stories, exploring their contemporary manifestations and mutations. For instance, he transforms the deity of Pan to an androgynous form in the work LGBT pan (2015-2016) that combines animal-like features while balancing on a wheel.
The past is always alive and fertile in his works, triggering a form of creative memory. In roots (2016-2017), a work inspired by the lyrics of poet Katerina Gogou “roots are for growing branches and not for returning back to them”, the root from a Cycladic tamarisk is spreading into new branches-directions. At the same time, the work’s mounting depicts human limbs, suggesting the sense of transportation and the personal memories. In Argiris Rallias’ sculptures, the landscape, the earth, human beings and life are inextricably linked. In Raccontami (2023), an open-air stone splicing in the shape of a seat is reminiscent of both a segment of a pre-existing construction or a drywall, as the artist interweaves architecture and spatial experience with the human body.
In the same spirit, in three days in mounteros (2022) Rallies creates a semi-circular stone window on Hydra’s highest peak, with a view to the sea, whose analogies derive from the juxtaposition of his own body’s axes against the Vitruvian coordinates. The sense of performing an event or a story is mysteriously transfused into the artwork itself. This feeling is possibly enhanced by the artist’s engagement with music – Argiris Rallias plays the Cretan lute, and takes a deep interest in musicians such as Chainides, Dimitris Apostolakis and Alexis Alevizakis. Plasticity, according to the artist, has affinities with musicality, as it is endowed with rhythm, pulsation and accurate movements, while it can also be perceived as a performative process that unfolds in dynamic form, pretty much like music.
I feel that sculptures are suffering on their pedestals, as one can easily discern in the ones placed in public space. It goes without saying that safely mounting a sculpture always involves a certain risk, but also poses a great challenge.
Despite being open to the use of any material, his practice so far indicates a preference towards materials found in earth and nature, such as stone, marble or even alabaster for its translucence. He also makes use of functional objects, roots and plants. “I am interested in materials that incorporate a form of memory. I don’t want to just squander them. I only use the necessary quantity for each work.” Initiated ever since the early stages of his career in the techniques of stone and marble milling, at first in Kythnos and later on in Tinos, during his bachelor’s studies at the Preparatory and Professional Fine Arts School of Panormos, Argiris Rallis’s work embodies the notion of moderation as prescribed by the Greek landscape. In addition, the artist places great emphasis on the positioning of the sculpture, dismissing the notion of the pedestal and transforming the sculpture’s mounting into an integral part of the work. “I feel that sculptures are suffering on their pedestals, as one can easily discern in the ones placed in public space. It goes without saying that safely mounting a sculpture always involves a certain risk, but also poses a great challenge.”
After graduating with honors from the School in Tinos he was accepted without exams at the Athens School of Fine Arts, in George Lappas’ workshop, whom he cites as a major source of influence both in his work as an artist and in the overall comprehension of art and life as an undivided process. Despite the fresh stimuli offered by Athens, he soon felt deprived of the rituality experience. The feeling of powerlessness against society’s norms led him to create chess games (2016), as a reflection of futility. “I am creating a game that has no meaning to be played, symbolically representing a game between the dead.” The correlation game-war was further developed in the trilogy war games (2023), during his master’s studies in Carrara, Italy, where he stayed for almost three years. In spite of the dead-end and the destruction it emits, Agriris Rallis’ work aspires to stand out as an ode to the “defeated”, the “true players”, whose vision motivates their fellow human beings.
Hope also emerges in a time will come (2022), based on the life of Katerina Goglou and her poem The Time Will Come When Things Will Change, included in the collection Sui Generis. A marble paper plane, that looks as if actually made of paper, is the hidden force behind the element of fragility, embodying the dreams that fly high only to be crashed when colliding with the orbit of life. Heavy materials end up looking light, often because of the light that reflects on them or emanates from them, as the illusion visualizes the unseen aspects of life. In prika (2022), the white embroidery in the form of a house over a double-sided tailor-made nightstand is actually a marble form so masterfully worked that it gives the impression of woven. The marble embroidery hushes but also protects a secret, old and personal story told by his grandmother from Crete, the artist’s birthplace. Shifting to a more humorous tone in after pandemy (2019), a pair of marble sleepers are placed in the countryside as if thrown away, consolidating the importance of the mundane.
Argiris Rallis reenacts the everyday routine, uplifting it to the status of the collective and the archetypal, aiming to safeguard the finite possessions of memory so as to metabolize it into an act. It intertwines the past and tradition with the present and the future, dissecting various aspects of human nature. Inspired by Nietzsche’s “Superhuman”, vision (2016), among other issues, touches upon the evolution of man, creating through an array of aligned forms different points of viewing, as well an intriguing combination between design, straight lines and the 3D nature of sculpting.
The artist often addresses contemporary socio-political commentary. In cave paintings (2019), for instance, he alludes to prehistoric cave painting to contemplate on the models of mass culture as the future evidence of contemporary culture. In the sculpture-performative work what remains (2023, the Greek participation in Stone Expo, held in Las Vegas, USA), he inserts a pigtail in the back of female figure that stands out in a fetal position in his duplicate of a neolithic figurine, as an element of an underlying erotism, but also as an indirect reference to knitting as a women’s activity. On the last day of the exhibition he destroys the pigtail, rendering homage to the celebrated act of protest carried out by the women of Iran, whereas soundmap’s message is even more overtly political, referring to the refugee flows.
His work can be interpreted as relational, in the sense that it arises from the connections between people and conditions, brought to the foreground. “I am interested in the plasticity and the dynamics of collective relations. I view every work of art as collective in essence.” Argiris Rallias has hosted a solo exhibition in Carrara, Italy, having also taken part in a number of collective exhibitions, among which Metapolitefsi (2024), The Inner Side of the Wind (Kymi, Evia, 2024), The End of Landscape (2024-2025). His next solo exhibition, curated by Christoforos Marinos, is scheduled to be held in summer 2025, at the artist’s atelier.
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