Yiannis Vassalos

Artificial Human Vanitas

5 – 27 Oct 2017 Athens CURATED BY Yiannis Bolis View Catalogue

In his completely personal style, Yannis Vassalos processes digital photographs, composes a body of figurative references, combines and transforms them into compositions that focus on the human convention and at the same time imprint the complexity and the divisions, the different versions and aspects of a fragmented and contradictory world, a chaotic and mazy reality in an imaginative, original and substantial way. The intense colors, the plasticity and density of shapes, the graphic designs, the fragments and distortions, the overlaps and elongations, the double and multiple pictures, the unexpected combinations and surprising meetings create balances and counterpoints, add dynamism, energy and intrinsic intensity, contribute critically to the total evocative and odd atmosphere of his works.

Artificial Nature Volume I

A peculiar universe of “fragmented” pictures and reflections comes to the foreground. Spaces that are familiar and unexpectedly unfamiliar, skulls (a returning and repeated motif like a constant memento mori) and arms spread out in the prayer’s position, weird herbal motifs and abstract shapes, gates that open their doors to the unknown, night views of urban sceneries, human figures that debouch in the dark and immerse into it, impose themselves dominantly in correspondence to experiential situations, sentimental and spiritual manifestations.

Artificial Nature Volume III

Yannis Vassalos’ compositions claim their own place in the era of mediated and digital picture. The topics emerge and exist in the meeting point of reality, fiction and dream, conceal or gradually reveal, while the pop culture, the surreal spirit, ironic disposition and a subversive sense of humour play the main part.

Artificial Nature Volume IV

In a systematic way, critical thinking and symbolic references he organizes his material, reveals the obsessions, the origins and intentions, composes unpredicted scenes of the human life, directs the ambivalent and “densely populated” spaces of his narrations and stories, the transformations, the transpositions experimenting with and investigating his expressive abilities.