Yiannis Fokas refers to Aeschylus' myth, particularly emphasizing on the role of Prometheus as a bearer of human wisdom. His work -3 meters height- is composed of three canvases sustained by a simple iron surface. The iron sheet appears in the center of the art work and is surrounded -on the top and its sides- by the paintings which form the Greek letter P (Π), the initial letter both for Prometheus' name (Προμηθεύς) and for the ancient word for fire (πυρ).

The iron-a material that Fokas has occasionally incorporated in his compositions since 1990-rests on the floor of the Titanium Yiayiannos Gallery, creating the impression of a door: a door that leads both to knowledge and self-realization. Five small, circular holes -placed centrally, vertically, and in perfect geometrical order- distract the iron surface and provoke the viewer to look through them only to face the dark void beyond. Knowledge cannot be acquired just by looking through an iron wall; the path to knowledge necessitates much more.

The gigantic letter of the Greek alphabet vibrates from lively colors, various materials, and rich textures. The abstract forms -characteristic of Fokas' recent work- fly in the painterly field. Their shapes are inspired by personal objects that exist in the artist's studio -new or empty tubes of paint, brushes, etc. These shapes disregard the laws of gravity and freely float against the yellowish background, composing a codified autobiographical reference and thus blending the present with the past.

The door of knowledge is surrounded by red color, adding an extra conceptual dimension to the art work and directing to Aeschylus' view that fire has led to civilization.

Fokas morphologically marries the opposites: the pure gestural painting with the industrial geometrical aesthetics of the minimalists. This intermingling of opposites is a clear reference to Heraclitus. Fokas symbolically transforms into a visual image the philosophical ideas of the lonian thinker who postulated that "the road up and down is one and the same".

Prometheus was particularly popular in Attica. Along with Hephaestos, who is furthermore the god of the worldly fire of volcanoes, he was considered the protector of craftsmen and especially of the ceramists of Keramikos. According to Pausanias (10.4.4.) Prometheus created the human race from clay, meaning to say that he was both a ceramist and the Creator of mankind. Hesiod refers to the ceramists in Works and Days classifying them in a special professional group, reasonably enough considering the beautiful vases that have survived from his time, the geometrical era of Greece.