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Alexandros Vasmoulakis | China

Alexandros Vasmoulakis is a Greek contemporary artist, whose field of interest in the art world include large-scale murals, installations and sculptures made out from found objects, and collaged portraits created entirely from scraps of newspaper. Vasmoulakis, or Vasmou as he prefers to be called, was born in 1980 in Athens, where he studied Athens School of Fine Arts. In 2006, he attended VSUP Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, located in Prague, Czech Republic.

The essence of Alexandros Vasmoulakis’ work is rooted in his professional background in the advertising industry, which was eventually combined with classic elements of Western Painting, modern graphic sensibilities and romanticism and magical realism of contemporary European muralists and street artists. His work is predominantly character-based and these creations explore the core values of human nature such as love, desire, seduction, and hate. Vasmou uses mixed media including collage, paint, photography and digital to convey the relationships between these portrayed characters. His work is very much driven by his state of mind and will reflect the mood of any given day.

Principal purpose of his artworks that include outdoor murals and large wallpapers, installations and studio work – such as paintings and Dadaist collages, is comparable to a culture-jammer, who tries to cast a snappy look at contemporary public communication, a glance that is most of the times enacted by the aesthetics and cognitive of advertising. For his collaborative installation series, the artist explores erroneous visuals and alternative thoughts, which mainly occur when seeing something from a different angle. Vasmou’s collective interventions commonly are found outdoors and generated by objects found in scrapyards or deserted factories. Vasmou also has traveled extensively throughout Europe, The Middle East and Asia producing large-scale outdoor works that exist amongst the constant bombardment of corporate commercials. In 1994, Alexandros Vasmouakis launched himself into the street art scene without prejudice. All he knew was that he wanted to play with his inspirations, regarding the city as a huge recreation area – or one could even say “re-creation”. His work can be divided into two categories: interior or exterior figurative paintings and ephemeral installations elaborated from found objects. These two aspects of his work show disproportionate bodies and deformed faces, together forming artificial structures that are simple reflections of human beings attempting to overcome the interior chaos that troubles them.

Alexandros Vasmoulakis refers to what he calls ‘the individual’: the foundation to his pictorial language that does not necessarily revolve around the individual but around everything, human or material, which appears to suffer: a lonely person or a couple in the middle of strangers, an object within a collection. From the artist’s perspective, an apparent happiness can hide an ineluctable decadence; a hostile ugliness imprison a subtle beauty; a victory conceal a defeat. With the irony of metaphorical language, Alexandros Vasmoulakis pushes boundaries. Like a vagabond in his style, he puts to the test all frontiers between painting and drawing, street art and installations. This is particularly the case when the artist unveils the stages leading to the final product of his artwork or when he makes use of a white environment to open up new perspectives of his paintings.

Alexandros’ work is most noticeable in his hometown, Athens, where he produced numerous pieces visible in different parts of the city. With his natural instinct for scale and composition he painted many pieces on doors, telephone boxes, hoardings and on the flanks of buildings up to 10 stories tall, generally making his home city a more attractive place to live. This artist, equally capable of covering a 100ft wall with paint and tiles, erecting witty 3D tableaus from household objects and composing beautifully considered works on paper, was featured in many group and solo exhibitions, including many collaborations with other street artists. Alexandros Vasmoulakis is currently living between Athens and London, where he is working as a freelancer.

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LosOtros Mj Tom is Writer, Curator and Urban Artist. For more on his work please check here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.