Skoufa Gallery happily presents Tassos Mantzavinos’ solo exhibition Παρά θιν’ αλός/ By the seaside. The exhibition opens on Thursday 15th January 2026 at 19:30 and it will run until the 7th February 2026.

Tassos Mantzavinos returns to his native shore in Faliro which is not a landscape drawn merely from his memory in a strictly biographical sense, but an esoteric place that reflects the artist’s inner self. During his childhood, there, by the water, he learnt to count time in a different way: with rhythms and repetitions, the sea becomes a feeling. The artist’s personal story is silently recorded on this relationship. The father, a marine, was lost early in life and his absence became a permanent void. The sea, ceased from being an external element, immersed the artist over the years and became a painting condition.

Mantzavinos’ familiar figures of seamen, boatmen, bodies in caiques, women in waiting, winds that assist or hinder situations, they all compose an aquatic universe where they stand awestruck. From Homer, the painter draws a sense of limit: Παρά θιν’ αλός/ By the seaside is used as the point where the action is cancelled and destiny comes in. From the folk tradition and Karaghiozis he borrows the handmade form, a simplicity that endures harshness and a childness used as a manner rather than an idiom.

Skoufa Gallery ‘introduces’ the visitor to Tassos Mantzavinos’ world by transferring and recreating a corner of the artist’s workshop in one of the gallery’s rooms on the first floor. Photographs, objects and some of the artist’s tools travel the visitor in time, to the moment when Mantzavinos opens up to his dark sea. His work is present as if it is still in the making, maintaining the directness of the creation.

The exhibition is curated by George Mylonas.