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Starting all of his paintings through working directly onto the canvas in acrylic and without the use of studies or sketches, Vasmoulakis draws continuously in an unplanned and unstructured direction, entering into a focused, intuitive flow until a composition begins to naturally emerge. Playing with the configurations continuously (even changing the entire orientation of the work) and keeping these scores of layers and (mis)directions present on the canvas, once he reaches a formal impasse the artist will then use sandpaper, scrapers, knives, and a high-pressure water cleaner to remove parts of the applied paint and excavate beneath the present surface. This orgasmic ritual of destruction not only breaks through the circular feelings of enthusiasm, frustration, perplexment, and dejection that the process delivers, but likewise serves to relinquish the artist’s own volition and
control over his works. Here, then, serendipity comes to the forefront.
Alongside this process of creative-destruction in which the historical layers of the painting are brought back to the forefront, Vasmoulakis also employs a drawing implement which contains an equally potent historical materiality: Painting the majority of his works with handmade crayons—a medium which, alongside oils, make up around ninety percent of the final paintings—this tool is manufactured by the artist himself and produced from the remains of beeswax votive candles the artist collects from monasteries all over the world. Melted and mixed with linseed oils and pigments, the physical structure of his paintings thus contains a rich spiritual history in themselves, a materialized constituent of the believers’ prayers. Whilst not spiritual himself, then, the wax forms a layer in which this belief, this yearning for the transcendent, is materially recycled.
The final key element of Vasmoulakis’s works, however the unique, ephemeral, handmade wallpaper, provides another vital link to the transcendental position that the artist means to engage. Here it is the interdependence, the symbiosis between wallpaper and canvas the artist is interested in, the relation between the canvas and its environment, the inside and the out. For Vasmoulakis, it is the sense of oneness, the inseparability between the two artifacts that is critical. The wallpaper thus acts not as the surrounding frame to the work (as binary opposite, as parergon to ergon), but rather as a single element of the larger whole. Like the process of meditation, the canvas and its wallpaper, like the inside and outside of the self, are understood as a single element, an immutable, material whole.
The end result of this process, the raucous orgy of colors and shapes that the artist’s works provide, thus aim to exceed the known qualities of our material world whilst likewise producing images and objects that simultaneously feel part of it. Often suggestive of the botanical (whether flowers or fruit), of organisms seen at a microscopic level, or perhaps of the profound visuals emergent from a hallucinatory experience, they present us with a biomorphic mass bursting with life, a formal accumulation suggestive of a new species or genus, yet one in which the world becomes both strangely perceptible and uncannily unrecognizable for both the viewer and the artist at the same time. What is thus given to us here is not a concept of the transcendental but an encounter with, an urge toward, the transcendental itself. What is given, like the mandala so important to the artist, is a layered journey moving from the outside to in, a series of pre-objective forms whose energy emerges through process and whose texture sits in tension between figuration
and pure form.
Education
2002 – 2007 Athens School of Fine Arts // Athens, Greece
2006 UMPRUM Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design // Prague, Czech Republic
Selected Exhibitions
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 At The Bottom - ASFA // Athens, Greece
2017 Mind Mischief (solo) The Breeder Gallery // Athens, Greece
The Decline of Heroes - Antikenmuseum // Basel, Switzerland
Small Enough to Keep Me Happy - Eighteen Gallery // Copenhagen, Denmark
La République De La Rue - Gallery Nosco // Marseille, France
2016 The Eaters and The Eaten (solo) The Breeder Gallery // Athens, Greece
2015 Surface - Allouche Gallery // New York, US
2014 My eyes are seeing you (solo) Art Expertise // Athens, Greece
No Country for Young Men - Bozar Centre of Fine Arts // Brussels, Belgium
ARENA Center of Contemporary Art // Torun, Poland
Like New! - Benaki Museum // Athens, Greece
Painting lll - Frissiras Museum // Athens, Greece
Inaugural exhibition - Allouche Gallery // New York, US
House of Cards - Amsterdam Light Festival // Amsterdam, Netherlands
2013 Figures (solo) Le Basse Projects // Los Angeles, US
2012 It felt like a kiss (solo) Gallery Nosco // London, UK
Athens Video Art Festival // Athens, Greece
The Newspaper Show The Breeder Gallery // Athens, Greece
2011 I’ve got you a date with Botticelli’s niece (solo) A.Antonopoulou.Art // Athens, 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 Gallery // Paris, France
NUART Festival // Stavanger, Norway
International Mural Exhibition Dafen Village // Shenzhen, China
Showcase Series SuperFrog Gallery // San Fransisco, US
2009 Hey ho, here we go, ever so high (solo) A.Antonopoulou.Art // Athens, Greece
The Good, the Bad 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 in the Frontpage Benaki museum // Athens, Greece
What Remains is Future Arsakeion // Patras, Greece
2004 Athens by Art Urban exhibition // Athens, Greece
2001 Neverending Story Goethe Institute // 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 Art 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 Impact in Current Design
GESTALTEN Walls and Frames: Fine Art from the Streets
2010 PUBLIKAT Mural Art Volume 3: Murals on huge public surfaces around the world
2009 PUBLIKAT Mural Art Volume 2: Murals on huge public surfaces around the world
2008 PUBLIKAT Mural Art Volume 1: Murals on huge public surfaces around the world
Artist Residencies
2015 Outdoor Camp. 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 Residency // Lagos, Portugal
2010 NUART // Stavanger, Norway
16 x 17 Kino Siska, International Art Residency // Ljubljana, Slovenia