Beyond perspective
text by Dr Kostas Prapoglou
“The way I deal with my works reflects my perception of the world. Harmony – innovation – imagination is a triptych that expresses me and which I embrace in my life and my art”,
Lambros Vrettos.
PERITECHNON Karteris Gallery is pleased to present Beyond perspective // traversing across dimensions, the first solo exhibition of artist Lambros Vrettos in Athens featuring a series of medium size and large-scale works on canvas.
Exploring the boundaries of space, as these are defined through both the perception of reality and the way we process the shaping of objects and forms that surround us, the artist projects a personal take on the world we live in. Each of his canvasses embrace a narrative unfolding aspects and segments of diverse environments. These are a blend of building structures and impressions of landscapes, all meticulously executed corresponding to an intense and distinctive artistic vocabulary.
Vrettos’s keen interest in architecture and its elements brings to the fore notions of construction and deconstruction, simultaneously toying with the human hypostasis, its objective absence and its subjective presence. A ruinous condition of buildings frequently appears in his narrative yet their illustrational and stylised quality in tandem with the vivid colour palette activate a satisfying feeling of exploration and discovery. Roofless homes with missing walls, furniture items and empty swimming pools, floor patterns that sometimes extend beyond the expected limits, all become part of an unexpected manifestation of life itself.
Redolent of stage sets or imprints of building installations infused with an abstract simplicity as well as a sturdy effectivity, all works on view accentuate a mapping of human activity. His interiors have a peculiar connection with de Chirican parallels. The missing building parts on a par with the total human absence generate a surreal domain, which, in turn, promotes a sense of timeless anticipation, a sense that something undefined is about to happen.
Vrettos’s obsession with acrylic colours, their vividness and sharpness derive from his need to imitate computer quality imagery and high-resolution digital printing. It is an indirect comment on the rapid advancement of technology and its pivotal role in our lives. Working his canvas surface in immense detail, he engages in an ongoing dialogue with digital technology.
With indirect references to the aesthetics of the formulaic realism and the colour vibrancy of David Hockney, Frank Stella and Sol Lewitt, the refined landscape style of Alex Katz, Richard Hamilton’s structural arrangement and axiality of the canvas surface as well as Victor Vasarely’s op art paradigms, Vrettos develops his own personal visual repertoire. It is a journey of esoteric explorations embarking towards new ideals and imaginary worlds.