Kiriakos Tompolidis
The More It Hurts, the Less It Shows
This booklet is published on the occasion of Kiriakos Tompolidis’ first solo exhibition with Galerie Judin. The young painter decided to unfurl his family album and invites us to follow the footsteps of his Greek grandparents, who left their homeland to find a better life in Germany. All his family members and their contrasting attitudes are featured in the works of this exhibition, including himself. They are about life between two “worlds”, as Tompolidis describes it, an in-between space that the young painter explores in his paintings. But while the prevailing theme is indeed family and cohesion, almost all the figures are depicted as solitary: They are left to their own devices, alone with their hopes and fears. It is this loneliness and melancholy that pervades Tompolidis’ work.