Stelios Faitakis comes up with some pretty odd characters. A Japanese goth in kabuki-style make-up plays keyboard above a unruly group of onlookers who are perched on a life-sized chessboard; an anguished military man gnaws on his own hand amongst the brambles and piles of sand in an otherworldly desert.
All are eerie and vaguely unsettling, but the artist makes each of them somewhat divine by washing them in liquid gold.
Faitakis himself is all about reconciling difference and placing divergent ideas within an all-embracing, mystical philosophy. Born in Athens, his parents both worked in a gold-chain factory (perhaps the source of a life-long obsession with the precious metal?). They were laid off when the factory closed and began to produce silver jewelry out of their home.
After high school, he managed to fall into art school after a friend entered one of his drawings into a school contest without his permission. A somewhat withdrawn child, Faitakis found the idea of studying art as thrilling as his parents found it unwise. He did win the battle, however, and in 1996 entered the School of Fine Arts in Salonica, a city of a half-million and the capital of Greek Macedonia. He later transferred to the School of Fine Arts in Athens, from which he graduated in 2003.
A quick look at Faitakis’ work suggests an obsession with Japanese woodblocks or Byzantine frescos, but certainly not with graffiti, the ultimate art of the unrefined, simplistic, and hurried for fear of the cops. But in fact, he got his start in the art world on the streets of Athens, the ancient but notoriously ugly town whose walls, according to Faitakis, “literally beg to be painted.”
“Art should be used as a tool for human beings to educate themselves – it opens us up to the use of capabilities that our modern civilization has shrunk such as intuition and inspiration.” – Stelios Faitakis
Though he no longer scribbles illegible phrases or sprays quick characters onto walls, the basic premise behind graffiti – as Faitakis describes it, that “art is created for the people” – remains strong. This drive to maintain contact with the public inspires him to paint not only on canvas for gallery shows but on buildings and even in hotel lobbies. The level of public access to his work is an important factor to Faitakis, allowing him to layer meaning to appeal both to the more “demanding eyes” of the art world and to average people just walking to work.
“If everyone is interested in music,” he explains, “I do not see a reason why they can’t be interested in painting and other visual arts as well, especially now that we live in an era where the image is one of – if not the – main means of communication.”
Around the time that he discovered graffiti, Faitakis developed an interest in a few less orthodox hobbies for modern artists: the Japanese martial art of Ninjitsu and a whole slew of mystical and religious traditions including Osteopathy (an alternative medical school based on the musculoskeletal system) and Qi Gong (an aspect of Chinese medicine focused on breathing and series of flowing poses).
Faitakis credits Ninjitsu with providing information and input for his painting, describing the practice as “very violent, but at the same time highly intelligent concerning the study of body mechanics, psychology and strategy.” The latter characteristics correspond to his use of geometry, mathematics, and physics to determine proportions and composition in his work.
A self-described anarchist, Faitakis describes the political aspects of his paintings (apparent in his regular use of warplanes, weapons, and men in uniform, particularly in his more recent pieces) as quite general despite the explicit imagery.
“Even a painting that may depict a scene that has a clearly political reference is doing so from a religious-universal standpoint, meaning it takes under consideration the oneness, the inner connection of all things.”
In fact, nearly every aspect of Faitakis’ work is aimed to portray a general spirituality, whether it’s through his use of color, narrative, or time.
In describing the use of gold in his pieces, Faitakis explains, “In the Chinese theory of Chi, the universal force that is used to create and maintain life has a goldish color when it comes from the Earth and a white/silver one when it comes from the sky. So, in my work, simple, ordinary colors coexist with metallic, light-reflecting colors in one complete world.” The gold, he adds, “refers to eternity, universal time.”
With such high-flying language and spirituality, one suspects that Faitakis believes he is acting out a divine decree by creating his pieces. But this is not at all the case.
“In my opinion, art should not be taken so seriously,” he begins when asked about his general attitude towards the role of art in society. “Art should be used as a tool for human beings to educate themselves – it opens us up to the use of capabilities that our modern civilization has shrunk such as intuition and inspiration.”
Faitakis impresses his spiritual approach onto local citizens in Athens by teaching Ninjitsu classes at the Free Social Center in downtown Athens.
“Teaching is an art by itself,” he points out, “and perhaps the most important because it reforms the human being itself.”
At base, Faitakis’ wholesale rejection of theory and his attempts to move towards a holistic conception of art have given him great freedom to mix different elements, absolving himself of the constraints of “schools” and “types.”
“Political, aesthetic, religious – art contains every one of those elements, whether we want them or not. Sometimes too much theory makes us forget all that. I found in spirituality a wonderful way to include every possible aspect in my painting without missing an element.”
Socrates, arguably the world’s favorite Greek, famously claimed that “a life unexamined is not worth living.” Stelios Faitakis carries on this venerated tradition: the systematic and uncompromising exploration of human life.
– Whitney Kassel