Vasilis Karakatsanis solo exhibition “Carpets 2”
Exhibition duration: 26 May – 27 June 2020
In order to comply with the advice of doctors for the protection and safety of public health no opening ceremony will take place. The exhibition will open on the scheduled start date and you will be able to visit us during the regular operating hours of Art Prisma Gallery.
Art Prisma Gallery in Piraeus presents Vassilis Karakatsanis’ solo exhibition “Carpets 2”, the second one to be hosted at Art Prisma and the 94thin the artist’s career.Starting from Athens, the “Carpets 2” series of works has been presented since 2016 in several venues around the world, such as Cyprus, Denmark, the U.A.E., as well as in many Greek cities and at various events, like Art Athina, Art Thessaloniki, Affordable Art Fair Milan, World Art Dubai International Art Fair, etc.
“Carpets 2” Vassilis Karakatsanis created these works to display his artistic approach of the “peculiar” Abd Al Aziz family, a family of merchants based on Beirut and operating in many different cities, particularly around the Mediterranean; they offer “magic” carpets for sale to people who will dare to travel on them, thereby living their fantasy or possibly their reality. The members of this family live scattered in various cities, maintaining thus their individual lifestyle, and try to win their buyers over, each with his own personal talent or by employing other methods of charm and magic.
These carpets carry with them a stockpile of prophetic messages and magic properties; they are “flying carriers” urging us to decipher their hidden messages, since their job is to transfer us away from evil and into a world of peace.
Today, “Carpets 2” marks for Vassilis Karakatsanis nothing more than the horizontal cross section of the majority of his artistic approaches, of all his years of work using fabric as a key element; indeed, it is a material that prevailed in his painting attempts, both as a background feature and as a component with which he maintains a life long relationship. After almost 30 years Vassilis Karakatsanis makes a comeback with a theme that he has worked on in the past, but this time he is driven by a different motive. In 1991, in collaboration with MagiaTsokli, V. Karakatsanis presented “Carpets 1” at Titanium Gallery. He displayed large scale paintings with carpets as their subject matter, which along with a series of works he printed on fabric, prompted Tsokli to design a line of women’s clothing and present it at a fashion show held in the premises of the gallery.
C.V.
Vassilis Karakatsanis (b.1957, Athens/Greece) lives and works in Athens. He has exhibited his work (solo exhibitions) in Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Indonesia, Ecuador, Turkey, Denmark, U.A.E. and Germany. His thematic choices and his personal artistic vocabulary are informed by his experience and observation of the surrounding world. He organizes his exhibitions by using a theatrical attitude: he transforms the mundane every day objects into structural elements of his work. He uses a clean and rich color palette and vivid contrasts. He creates installations by using elements from the existing three dimensional spaces and by transforming them into art forms. He researches with sensitivity the limits between reality and illusion.
Art Prisma Gallery coordinator: Natassa Thomakou
Opening Hours: Tu. Thu. Fri: 10:30-15:00 & 17:30-21:00 / Wed. Sat: 10:30-15:00
Sun. Mon: closed