Stelios Karamanolis - The Failure of Will

Duration : 27.03.14 - 03.05.14



    In his second solo show at CAN gallery and immediately following his recent show in Vienna entitled "An Artist Without a Concept is like a Traveller Without a Roadmap", Stelios Karamanolis continues his preoccupation with history and dystopia through a series of paintings with obvious references to historical groups like "Die Bruecke" and "Der Blaue Reiter" and great contemporaries such as Marlene Dumas and Peter Doig.

    Very much in the fashion of the German Expressionists many years earlier, Karamanolis moves away from the representation of reality and turns towards the world of thought and emotion in an attempt to penetrate some of the darkest folds of the human soul. Uneasy and powerful, his brushstrokes express a series of internal searches, and mental anxieties that become evident through aggressive forms, violent strokes and vivid colors (red, green, brown) that were completely absent from his painting the last few years. His attention focuses on man and his often complex, troubled inner world and is illustrated in his subjects in the form of a very expressionistic style of painting of distorted faces and bodies.

    Human drama, alienation and loneliness are reflected through simplified forms, graphic intensity and often powerful, unrealistic colors. At the same time he pervades his subjects with a blend of humor and joyful anarchy. Occasionally a match-like man is standing next to a lumberjack and at other works, that same match carries a haversack over his shoulder and takes a walk in the woods. His narrative moves from the realm of real into the realm of the imaginary and often terrible and/or as a portrait/metaphor of the states of human mind.


Bio:

Stelios Karamanolis was born in 1977 in Athens. He studied painting and printing in the Athens School of Fine Arts. He lives and works between Greece and Berlin. He has had five solo shows in CAN Christina Androulidaki gallery and Potnia Thuron and RemapKM in Athens and in Kunstraum am Schauplatz in Vienna. In 2012 he completed a residency in Glogau Air Berlin. He has participated in many group shows in Kunsthalle Athena, Remap4, Lustlands, Anamesa, Gazon Rouge-Loreni Alimantiri gallery, Tint gallery-Thessaloniki, 50-1 gallery-Lemessos, Empros theatre, the 3rd Athens Biennale, XYZ Outlet, Taf Art Foundation, Michalis Kakoyiannis Foundation, Animefest, Openshowstudio, Kappatos gallery, Mithimna Municipal Gallery, 5th International Animation Festival in Istanbul, Kafeneon, 4th Biennale of Fine Art School graduates in Toronto-Canada, Action Field KODRA-Thessaloniki, the French Institute of Athens and other.