love-labour-lost

love / labour / lost

Vangelis Gokas 

01.11.2012 - 15.12.2012

In a continuation of his previous work, Gokas explores issues that are in direct dialogue with the human nature and the daily routine. Repeatedly, almost obsessively, he returns to the same images again and again – a pillow, a blanket, a pavement, a church, a portrait, a curtain. Everything looks like a fragment of a story of a melancholic hero of a book, who is trying to adapt in life by finding a purpose to what he sees around him and how he reacts upon. In his search for meaningful and artistic values he fixes his eyes on details both sensitive and surprising.

These mysterious works challenge principles and ideas such as subjectivity, loneliness, the voyage, love and death, sometimes with symbolism, other times with drama or else with romanticism. The repetition does not intend to broaden but to dig in the subject and even more in the painting itself, its history its quality and truthfulness. Gokas examines in depth with kindness and respect, sometimes even with reverence, the space and its relation to the object as well as to the void, by use of a grey atmosphere.

Vangelis Gokas was born in Athens, Greece in 1969. He studied at the School of Fine Arts of Thessaloniki (1988-1994), the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona, Spain, and had also a postgraduate degree at the School of Fine Arts of Athens. He obtained a scholarship from the Spanish government for his Doctrine, as well as the Greek Government scholarship for his MA. He has presented his work in solo exhibitions in Greece (Elika Gallery 2010,Tint Gallery 2008, Batagianni Gallery, Stigma) and in many group exhibitions (Kosovo National Gallery, EMST, Benaki Museum, etc). He is currently a professor at the School of Fine Arts of Ioannina.

His works can be found in important private and public collections.                                   [ more ]