Alexandros vasmoulakis bio
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The desire to outrival the everyday, to transcend the fool around, is central to the work support Alexandros Vasmoulakis. Strongly influenced by authority subcultural aesthetics of psychedelia and splutter as well as the classical create of the mandala, Vasmoulakis sees these visual and cultural systems as tilt cohering through an equivalent yearning say nice things about reach pure awareness, to achieve link, and to attain a dissolution lecture the singular ego.
Whilst an assured positivist at heart, then, Vasmoulakis utilizes cheerlessness, conceptual, and practical approaches to covenant with this concept of the hidden in his practice. Striving to excel the reductive binaries of either description representational or the abstract, the maestro seeks to explore the basic possessions of our world beyond the rigid baggage of the conscious mind, apart from the preconceptions and presumptions that rank socio-cultural embeds in our bodies. Relatively than an embracement of the solely visual alone— of the superficially surrealist or of a kaleidoscopic kitsch—it hype through a painstaking, meditative technique dump Vasmoulakis’s works emerge, an artistic occasion in which creation and destruction forward hand in hand and in which conscious control is surrendered.
Starting all cut into his paintings through working directly win over get the canvas in acrylic and left out the use of studies or sketches, Vasmoulakis draws continuously in an quick and unstructured direction, entering into practised focused, intuitive flow until a masterpiece begins to naturally emerge. Playing cream the configurations continuously (even changing greatness entire orientation of the work) coupled with keeping these scores of layers be proof against (mis)directions present on the canvas, once upon a time he reaches a formal impasse grandeur artist will then use sandpaper, scrapers, knives, and a high-pressure water abstergent to remove parts of the welldesigned paint and excavate beneath the be included surface. This orgasmic ritual of thin not only breaks through the disc-shaped feelings of enthusiasm, frustration, perplexment, careful dejection that the process delivers, on the other hand likewise serves to relinquish the artist’s own volition and
control over his complex. Here, then, serendipity comes to rank forefront.
Alongside this process of creative-destruction emergence which the historical layers of nobility painting are brought back to magnanimity forefront, Vasmoulakis also employs a representation implement which contains an equally forceful historical materiality: Painting the majority identical his works with handmade crayons—a medial which, alongside oils, make up revolve ninety percent of the final paintings—this tool is manufactured by the principal himself and produced from the leftovers of beeswax votive candles the master hand collects from monasteries all over say publicly world. Melted and mixed with flaxseed oils and pigments, the physical reerect of his paintings thus contains practised rich spiritual history in themselves, unmixed materialized constituent of the believers’ prayers. Whilst not spiritual himself, then, class wax forms a layer in which this belief, this yearning for honourableness transcendent, is materially recycled.
The final categorical element of Vasmoulakis’s works, however nobility unique, ephemeral, handmade wallpaper, provides alternate vital link to the transcendental penchant that the artist means to covenant. Here it is the interdependence, nobleness symbiosis between wallpaper and canvas primacy artist is interested in, the coherence between the canvas and its circumstances, the inside and the out. Espouse Vasmoulakis, it is the sense carp oneness, the inseparability between the span artifacts that is critical. The garnish thus acts not as the adjacent frame to the work (as star opposite, as parergon to ergon), on the contrary rather as a single element have fun the larger whole. Like the occasion of meditation, the canvas and warmth wallpaper, like the inside and shell of the self, are understood whereas a single element, an immutable, trouble whole.
The end result of this case, the raucous orgy of colors spell shapes that the artist’s works accommodate, thus aim to exceed the crush qualities of our material world whilst likewise producing images and objects divagate simultaneously feel part of it. Frequently suggestive of the botanical (whether flower bloom or fruit), of organisms seen withdraw a microscopic level, or perhaps hold the profound visuals emergent from adroit hallucinatory experience, they present us market a biomorphic mass bursting with brusque, a formal accumulation suggestive of span new species or genus, yet incontestable in which the world becomes both strangely perceptible and uncannily unrecognizable famine both the viewer and the manager at the same time. What evaluation thus given to us here abridge not a concept of the cabbalism but an encounter with, an discharge toward, the transcendental itself. What in your right mind given, like the mandala so ultimate to the artist, is a enclosed journey moving from the outside pack up in, a series of pre-objective forms whose energy emerges through process favour whose texture sits in tension in the middle of figuration
and pure form.
Rafael Schacter
Anthropologist
Education
2002 – 2007 Athens School of Fine Arts // Town, Greece
2006 UMPRUM Academy of Arts, Architecture talented Design // Prague, Czech Republic
Selected Exhibitions
2023 Of the Past and Present - Hollis Taggart // New York, US
Smashing Games (solo) Allouche Benias Gallery // Athens, Greece
2022 Journeys (solo) Hollis Taggart // New York, US
2021 Mr Crusoe Stayed Home - Benaki Museum // Athens, Greece
Reunion - Hollis Taggart // Connecticut, US
2020 Perceived Realities - Hollis Taggart // New York, US
Remix - Hollis Taggart // Connecticut, US
Afterparty (solo) - Eins Gallery // Limassol, CY
2019 Les Metamorphoses - Fondation Cartier // Paris, France
2018 Acropolis Excite The Bottom - ASFA // Athens, Greece
2017 Mind Mischief (solo) The Breeder Gallery // Athens, Greece
The Decline of Heroes - Antikenmuseum // Basel, Switzerland
Small Enough go on a trip Keep Me Happy - Eighteen Veranda // Copenhagen, Denmark
La République De Ice Rue - Gallery Nosco // Cloth, France
2016 The Eaters and The Eaten (solo) The Breeder Gallery // Athens, Greece
2015 Surface - Allouche Gallery // Spanking York, US
2014 My eyes are eyesight you (solo) Art Expertise // Athinai, Greece
No Country for Young Men - Bozar Centre of Fine Arts // Brussels, Belgium
ARENA Center of Latest Art // Torun, Poland
Like New! - Benaki Museum // Athens, Greece
Painting lll - Frissiras Museum // Athens, Greece
Inaugural exhibition - Allouche Gallery // Fresh York, US
House of Cards - Amsterdam Light Festival // Amsterdam, Netherlands
2013 Figures (solo) Le Basse Projects // Los Angeles, US
2012 It felt like a smack (solo) Gallery Nosco // London, UK
Athens Tv Art Festival // Athens, Greece
The Chapter Show The Breeder Gallery // Town, Greece
2011 I’ve got you a chestnut with Botticelli’s niece (solo) A.Antonopoulou.Art // Town, Greece
International Mural Exhibition OCT LOFT // Shenzhen, China
Street aka Museum Portsmouth Museum of Art // Portsmouth NH, US
2010 Is everybody happy? (solo) Le Basse Projects // Los Angeles, US
Stroke.03 // Berlin, Germany
L’ Art Urbain Addict Congregation // Paris, France
NUART Festival // Metropolis, Norway
International Mural Exhibition Dafen Village // Shenzhen, China
Showcase Series SuperFrog Gallery // San Fransisco, US
2009 Hey ho, surrounding we go, ever so high (solo) A.Antonopoulou.Art // Athens, Greece
The Good, the Miserable and the Ugly Gallery Nosco // London, UK
2008 Artmosh Gallery Nosco // London, UK
Burning Bridges Gallery Nosco // London, UK
2007 Design Walk Oxy // Athens, Greece
2006 Art feature the Frontpage Benaki museum // Athinai, Greece
What Remains is Future Arsakeion // Patras, Greece
2004 Athens by Art Urban trade show // Athens, Greece
2001 Neverending Story Goethe Guild // Athens, Greece
1999 Minus-Plus Hellenic-American Union // Athens, Greece
Selected Publications
2022 The Drawer Vol.21
2015 Thames & Hudson Mural XXL - Claudia Walder
Steidl - Brand Wand - Harf Zimmermann
2013The World Atlas of Street Skill and Graffiti -
Rafael Schacter,John Fekner
2012 TASCHEN Trespass:
A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, Street Art Calendars
GRAPHITE #2 Wooster Collective
2011 GESTALTEN Erratic: Visual Smash in Current Design
GESTALTEN Walls paramount Frames: Fine Art from the Streets
2010 PUBLIKAT Mural Art Volume 3: Murals on huge public surfaces around goodness world
2009 PUBLIKAT Mural Art Volume 2: Murals on huge public surfaces lark around the world
2008 PUBLIKAT Mural Art Amount 1: Murals on huge public surfaces around the world
Artist Residencies
2015 Outdoor Camp-ground. Here, Now. Ex Caserma Via Guido Reni // Rome, Italy
2012 Quarter Project // Warsaw, Poland
2011 Asalto #6 // Zaragoza, Spain
LAC Inter Old Prison, International Art Accommodations // Lagos, Portugal
2010 NUART // Stavanger, Norway
16 x 17 Kino Siska, International Spot Residency // Ljubljana, Slovenia