The Greek artist Manolis Anastasakos calls to us from both primordial past and distant future in his new exhibition MYTHOS: MNEMOSYNE which debuts in London during the capital’s busiest art month. Taking its name from Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, the show provides a welcome riposte to the surface vacuity of the modern age and an art industry driven solely by the vagaries of consumerism and pop culture – offering a scared space for contemplation of the various mythologies and deeply embedded archetypes that have shaped our individual identities and collective consciousness across centuries, and continue to do so.

Exhibited by Varvara Roza Galleries, in synergetic collaboration with The Blender Gallery, MYTHOS: MNEMOSYNE invites us to see far beyond the walls of Plato’s cave and experience a deeper reality, where memory and time intertwine across human existence. Here, classical deities and mystical cities slowly reveal themselves from the veiled depths of huge Rothko-esque canvases, in which the minimalist classicism at the core of Anastasakos’s artistic practice reminds us of the personal resonance of mythologies – each work casting epic tales across our own inner landscapes.

This series, which Anastasakos began in 2014, is the culmination of a philosophical and artistic quest that delves into the core of human existence, reflecting the artist’s own inner dialogue between antiquity and modernity, offering an intricate interplay of abstraction, minimalism, and the baroque. Through this artistic pluralism, the works transcend traditional interpretations of myth, with each piece acting as a mirror, allowing the viewer to see themselves within the narrative, and uncover personal layers of meaning among timeless stories of humanity – weaving through a panoply different civilisations and iconography, and inviting profound reflection on the transience of all life. Here, he discusses his work with Flaunt and tells us why he has devoted his life to celebrating the intersection of mythology, art, and science.

What would you say drives your creativity?
I have always tried to find a way to use my imagination in various different forms, because, I quickly understood as a child that the only thing that could sustain my inner self and my outer self as an individual was using my art, and that, in my life, I would always I prefer to be happy and creative than to be safe.  What I found in art as a child, I just couldn't found the rest of the world.  It is so important thing for me to use the part of the brain that our society doesn’t encourage or work with, because, for me, each brain is as vast as the universe. I'm fundamentally aware that I am traveling on a spinning rock inside the solar system, and that this cosmic reality goes hand-in-hand with my inner self – my core is complete because my soul and my brain are part of this reality; this moment. My desire is to embrace reality and live, and not confuse security with happiness.

I love the idea that there is a vast cosmic reality that we are merely players in, why do mythological constructs inspire you so much? 

I was born in a country where mythology is really everything, so this triggered my imagination and led me to understand that behind the science, the logic, the music, the astronomy, and the philosophy of antiquity, are human stories. I understood that people are made from stories, and that we communicate these stories with each other because it's the only way to know each other. Myths, for me, are the backbone structure of the entire human story, and have created all of our key inner archetypes over centuries – ideas that help us better understand our inner structures. 

Do you think that a rich imagination can provide a path to self-knowledge? 

I see the imagination as a bridge between two forms of knowledge, and a way of making the unreal real. Art is a tool that reminds us that we are spiritual beings.  In my work, you will never see everything because I imbue my artistic object with layer upon layer of depth of understanding.  What I try to achieve in my work is to create a bridge that connects everything, while reaching into the distance and into time. So, in front of an object, you have this minimalistic seeming colour, but when you come closer, you start to recognize many things, and whatever you discover has to do with you and what you are drawn to.

In some sense it seems like a playground for the senses?

Yes, it’s like a playground in the brain where your senses are trying to grab things, and trying to understand, these psychological depths, while moving through time.  The colour is the first thing to understand, and then when you take step forward into the work, you're starting to see more. Then the artwork grabs you, and you see a thousand places to walk towards in the work that are beyond what the eye sees initially. In this way, it invites you into a contemplation that is free of time – time does not exist in your dreaming mind. What I'm trying to do is to connect what our ancestral memory to a contemporary new vocabulary of art. 

It feels as though the work provides a tool for the viewer to project himself or herself into the landscape also …

True. Not many people know that you receive images not only through your eyes, but also, at the same time, via what you project with your mind. For example, you see a cloud in the sky and say, look, I love it, or you find a girl you fall in love with, and then, after two months, no longer, because your projection has diminished. It is not everyday knowledge that art is about both your eye and your spirit. We can dream when we are awake. And an artwork can create a sense beyond what you see, and what you are projecting upon the tabula rasa in your brain.  And, in the end, that is how we understand life, isn’t it?  We don’t see everything, and we don't know everything. There is so much beyond the surface, and there are so many layers to see or project into. Do the fish in the ocean know that there are stars beyond those upon the surface of the water? Are we so unlike those fish? 

Do you believe the purpose of art is to help us better understand or remind us of the profound nature of being?

Art, for me, is all about asking these big questions, and in these works the question is you would sustain attention as a viewer and what would you see. This is very important to me to think about how this happening, how this works, even if I don't give you the answer. It's very important to widen the aperture and take the blinkers of the everyday world away from the eyes, because this raises an opportunity to explore our inner structure – every question your brain asks is a new opening to the world and a way to connect to the moment; a way to have a new experience that is beyond mere materialism and the pursuit of money. And it’s important to have deeper experiences because we’ll all die – you have money, you don’t have money, it’s not important. Money does nothing. It’s the richness of the experience that is important. We’re alive. We need to have questions. We need to have critical thinking. I'm trying to connect and construct these needs and stories in my art. 

It sounds almost like a sense of purpose for you. Do you feel compelled and driven to create these works? 

Yes, I to try to create deep experience and experience that humans have never seen before, something that is hopefully overwhelming. The core of why I am doing it is to create some questions about what it means to be alive. It can take me three months to create a work, and I can work for eight hours a day in one colour, and in a ways, this destroys my eyes. But, for me, it's like a freedom, and an escape – I lose time, I lose everything that makes me ‘me’ and I become simply a point of understanding. This is my gift.  The only ritual life that doesn't expect from you is to be who you are.  Art gives you the opportunity not to be you, and to transcend your daily identity – and it’s then that you you understand that we're human beings created in a supernova in outer space. So, within the process of making the artwork, something is happening that applies to the cosmic and mythological, and we often see this in the recurring motif of the golden ratio in painting. Myths, by their very nature, unfold gradually. The more time and focus you devote to them, the deeper your understanding becomes.

MYTHOS: MNEMOSYNE exhibits at Varvara Roza Galleries, 8 Duke Street, St. James’s London, SW1 from Oct 2 to Oct 22.