VANGELIS ANDREOPOULOS
VANGELIS
ANDREOPOULOS
METROPOLIS 2020
Solo Art Exhibition, April 2023
I have been living and working in Moscow since 2017. From the first moment when I started using the city's metro, I understood, and above all, I felt, that it is a unique and separate universe with its own laws, mythology and atmosphere, which lives, breathes and evolves in but also alongside the dimension of the known world. Its unique and distinct geometry and atmosphere, and its temporal and spatial dimension, full of hints, thoughts and feelings, constitute an inexhaustible source of inspiration and creative quest.
The interesting fact about the creation of this series is its beginning, which started before the breakout of the Covid19 pandemic. It is always a mystery to me how some particular intuition, perhaps some instinct I would say, led me to start seeing the image of a world that felt limited, confined and bleak, just as it later became through quarantines and restrictions. It was precisely this sense of confinement and restriction, and especially the reflection of its consequence on the existential core of man, that combined and mixed within me along with all that I have stated about the Moscow metro and its unique character, that gave birth to the material that forms the essence of this work.
An atmosphere of anxiety, uncertainty and allusion. Man as a material and spiritual dimension within the distinct space and time of the metro, within its unique geometry and mythology. The forms, shapes and colours. The memory of a world whose image is blurred and the thought of a world that emerges. Abstract thoughts that connect the past, present and future. And always and everywhere, man. Alone in the great metropolises though so close to fellow human beings. Alone before the deep existential anguish of life and death, walking on the tightrope between resignation and transcendence. It is good and right for interpretation to remain open, however. Fortunately, the interpretation always ends up being the personal affair of the viewer, based mainly on instinct, imagination and experience, since language is never enough to explain what an image can say without words.
I genuinely believe in a balanced, solid and pure art, absolved of eccentric expression and sophisticated form. We do not have to agonize over fashion or struggle to impress, but rather pursue what is genuinely different, the emotion and the truth, the only genuine mother of the revelation and the new. The line, the color, the form, the shape, the space, even the coincidental need to delicately balance on a tight rope in order to be able to express the eternal mystery of life and death. Technique and rules, precious tools in the genesis of works of art however, they are transformed into a two-edged knife when they serve only themselves. On the contrary, through intellect and feeling, they allow the creator to arrange and synthesize chaos, thus transforming the finite dimension of the visible world and life into spiritual and transcendental. It is this transformation that, for thousands of years, has been weaving the face of the eternal and the sacred, whether this is expressed through a painting in Lascaux caves, an ancient column, an African mask, a Byzantine icon, the Mona Lisa, Rembrandt portraits, Van Gogh sunflowers, or La Guernica.
