THEODOROS
RATFOPOULOS
17/01 - 17/03/2001
Opening
Theodoros
Raftopoulos is born in 1966 in
1999-2000:
Post Graduate ( video & multi media),
Selected
exhibitions:
1999 Unlimited Contemporary Art,
Works on paper, Stalke Gallery,
Germinations X, European Biennale
for young artists, Antwerpen
1998 Germinations X, The Factory (
Since
the Germinations X Biennale
(1998-99), Raftopoulos’s sensual and instinctive pictures based on symmetric or
kaleidoscopic arrangements showed his compositional skill and asserted Manipulation as the basis of his work.
The
artist uses the body (often his own) as a playground, pulling bits of its
inside to the surface, mixing it with various substances, turning its fragments
into balanced compositions.
For
his second solo show at Unlimited Contemporary Art, Raftopoulos develops this
basic principle of manipulation towards another dimension, more related to
space and time.
This
new step in Raftopoulos’s work is influenced by the recent use of video and
digital pictures: he re-arranges components (established as a kind of
vocabulary) and pictures (digital prints, photos, drawings, lightscreens), that
reoccur in different combinations and
installations.
The
whole body of work becomes the set of hybrid situations, questionning relations
such as physical and mental, intimacy and history, inside and outside, energy
and desire...
In
this context of permanent evolution, the recurrent and essential green element operates as a link between
human, animal & plant, playing with its natural/artificial quality,
sometimes recovering the body, sometimes acting as an abstract background.