Arriton
by Ayis Lertas
“…All that’s left is fragments…”
Arriton is an enigmatic work from the artist Ayis Lertas. To open Arriton is to encounter the remnants of a lost esoteric tradition, leaves from an untranslated manuscript, a chance find amongst the disordered bookstalls of a remote ancient city. The seeker is thence immersed into a world redolent of gnostic gems, magical alphabets, defixiones and the spells of the magical papyri, which unfolds following a logic all of its own and yet remains entirely alien. It is a Borgesian artefact which will intrigue, challenge and reward contemplation.
Arriton is a gnomic and sigilic tour de force comprising 92 leaves of dense calligraphic images, ideograms and magical charaktêres, mysterious forms that have been subjected to applied erosion by the cruel hands of time. They seem fragile, these ragged-edged torn survivals from the library of Babel; bound together they comprise a relic of a numinous sorcerous hinterland that was hitherto unknown.
There are books about magic, and there are magical books. Arriton belongs to that rarer second category. It speaks deeply to those who are willing to surrender to the abyssal silence and be absorbed in the power of sign and symbol.
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Table of Contents
Definition
Fragments
Artist’s Statement
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Standard Hardcover Edition - limited to 613 copies
104 pages. Bound in burgundy cloth, stamped in gold on front and back covers, with a gold label on spine, tan endpapers. Printed on 170 gsm paper.
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“Preliminary impressions of these lamp-blackened shades captured on desert-dry parchment evoke narrative origins blown in on perfumed zephyrs from distant Cathay and Arabia; along forgotten tributaries of the silk road towards the eastern ports of the Mediterranean, cast out westward on salt-blasted seas onward to Alexandria and Andalusia. The engagement by such dense and deeply sedimented vistas is as fulfilling as it is overwhelming.”
Mark Hewitt for Paralibrum - read the full review here
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About the Artist
Ayis Lertas is a multidisciplinary artist from Athens, Greece. His work ranges from album and book cover illustrations to fashion and jewellery design. The themes of his work traverse the erotic and mystical to the absurd, comedic and grotesque, merging primitive and ancient aesthetics with pop art and contemporary culture.