Mandala 1 – Industry

Set on a gold ground that echoes Byzantine icon painting, this mandala turns the circle into a contemporary cosmogram: a repeating, rhythmic structure where a personal point of departure opens onto the endless flux of the world. Informed by Far Eastern sources, especially Tibetan mandalas, Faitakis makes geometry undeniable, letting it organize perception while he tests it against the urban-industrial present. Mixed media (acrylic, egg tempera, spray paint, and stencils on canvas) creates a luminous field where abstraction and representation fuse, and where reverence for progress is laced with irony and humor. The circle becomes a time-microcosm, folding past icon into present infrastructure. The central wheel reads like a kaleidoscope of production: factories, silos, bins, and conveyor belts lock into sequences, while chimneys exhale smoke that darkens the pattern. Industry appears as both monument and warning, an efficient order edging toward depletion and collapse. A Byzantine-style inscription along the lower edge anchors the scene like an icon’s caption. The work was first presented in the exhibition “Thesis–Antithesis–Synthesis: In the Belt of Change,” curated by Katerina Koskina, at Ocean Flower Island Museum Park, China (2021).