VASSILI BALATSOS

6/3-6/4/2002

Opening on Wednesday 6/3/2002 8-10pm

Vassili Balatsos was born in Larissa in 1966. He graduated from the School of Art and Researche in the Villa Arson (Nice, France) in 1990 and in 1996 he created the gallery Unlimited Contemporary Art in Athens where he lives and works.

In May 2002 he will present a new wall-drawing at the MAMCO(Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) in Geneva.

Exhibitions :

1992 L’auberge espagnole, Villa Arson, Nice

1993 Litebulb Overkill, Villa Arson, Nice (solo)

Les passants du phalanstere, Villa Arson, Nice

1994 Galerie G. Vitte. Ajaccio, Corsica (solo)

Kiki the Last II, Art: Concept, Nice

1995 Loaded, La Zonmee, Paris

1997 Alien Bodies, Icebox Gallery, Athens

Inhuman Essays, Unlimited, Athens

And the ship is still not in sight, Thessaloniki, Greece & Bremen, Germany

The works on view in the first solo exhibition of Vassili Balatsos in Athens are based on the “landscape” a category of the fine arts reflecting the conception of the human dimension with regards to nature or his own creativity.

The “Independent Landscapes” are wall-drawings of buildings made with adhesive tapes. Their perspective open a virtual space, hence the ephemeral construction denies monumentality. The “Logical Landscapes”, the second unity of works, consists of sculptures, representing geological sections of the earth. The materials used contradict the idea of the original representation, morever the absence of natural size and the infinite colour variations lead an object of knowledge to illusion.

Inscribing modernism (with references to Malevitch, Mondrian, Duchamp…) the work of Vassili Balatsos is based on painting, evacuating (momentarily…) the canvas board. I wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting said Duchamp, I was interested in ideas- not merely in visual products. The economy of means strengthens the resistance to the stereotyped image and enhance an interpretation of the reality more than its disinterested acceptance.