VASILIS AVRAMIDIS | AFTER HOURS

The Contemporary London and Wilder Gallery are delighted to present the highly anticipated solo exhibition by acclaimed painter Vasilis Avramidis (b.1981, Greece). Vasilis Avramidis is a contemporary master of his craft, skilfully and delicately constructing imagined landscapes that live in between the genres of landscape and still life. Created between 2020-2021, we present a series of 7 new oil paintings that are the culmination of an exploration and reintroduction of colour into Vasilis’ recent monochrome work but also bear witness to a playful approach to juxtaposition of form.

Without making a distinction between contemporary art and art history, Vasilis’ visual sources include compositions from classical painting, architecture magazines, pure abstraction and everyday objects. The paradoxical environments that emerge from this transfiguration seem to have a tangible material quality to them. Speaking about his new series, Vasilis says “I think of these images more likely as objects, rather than scenery images or vistas. They remind me of the “object-hood” of painting practice itself.”

Present in his new works are a multi-layering of imagery and landscape, a purposeful blocking off or concealment of forms, exquisite textural detail and isolated blurred areas fading off to a mere impression of something that once was. Flat shapes overlap form, and lines slice through the images both interrupting and challenging the depth and nuances of the foliage. The peek-a-boo of hide and seek is ever present in Vasilis’ skilful use of light and shadows and his playful use of colour.

The paintings have undergone various stages of transformation. Some of the pieces started as portraits, or paintings of sculptural forms. They later transformed into still life, and were eventually completed as distorted landscapes on an unshapely terrain. On his work Vasilis say’s “I enjoy the contradictions between genres, and through these juxtapositions I am left with these unpopulated landscapes that communicate a placelessness, which reminds of their former shapes as sculptural forms or still life. However, they are mostly made by decisions in the process, while undergoing various stages of metamorphosis over months in the studio.”
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Vasilis Avramidis b.1981 Greece. Graduated from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design with an MA in Fine Art in 2011.Vasilis has had solo exhibitions in London, UK, Tokyo, Japan and Thessaloniki, Greece. He has exhibited widely internationally including Los Angeles USA, London UK, Copenhagen Denmark, Athens Greece to name a few. Vasilis’ work are collected internationally in private collections in the UK, USA, Japan, Greece, Netherlands, Australia and Cyprus. His work is also held in the University of the Arts London and In4Art Rotterdam. His work has been featured in The Telegraph, Metro UK, Rooms magazine and numerous online publications including Hi Fructose, Juxtapoz, Fad Website, Yatzer, Beautiful / Decay, Blacklisted.dk, Gestalten Berlin.