| BIO |
| THESIS |
| STATEMENT |
| MANIFESTO |
| INTERVIEWS |
| PRINTS |
Thesis;
Oxymoron
Illustration is a characteristic/property of memory. It projects the depiction as a necessary expression and it transforms it into visual speech to narrate characteristic trails of a symbolic era/story. We tell stories that empower human genius and justify pain; the primitive pain for our relationship with void and the connection of the soul with the matter.
Human as a being presents a special quality in natural world. He has the right to represent life. The first depictions were human illustrations of those who lived in the caves of the earth; the first reflection of our natural presence in existence; the first narration of a story, the first construction/creation of a myth, the first political act and the religious feeling was established.
This reading is important for the way an image defines the natural presence of human and serves the constant transformation of representation that the human being is undergoing /experiences as a reference symbol. The position of body in space reflects the reaction to the stimuli of life. And space as a physical construction is experienced emotionally. Their interaction matures our feeling of consciousness.
In the art of photography realism expressed a transcendent conflict - what the Indians referred to as “the stealing of the soul” – which is nothing else but the fulfilling of the void. It is the reflection as a literal expression in human presence and in the form that changes and is apprehended, with the quality of speech each of us possesses.
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Perceptively, it exposed the pluralism of expression and highlighted the moment as the point-picture where the soul interacts with the matter. This primitive need of communication constantly creates an image that with its aesthetic power can fulfil the void. The effort is to define anew a view in our surrounding space and create expressively a perceptive sensitivity and thrill.
Bio;
Born in 1975 in Athens, Greece, PANAYIOTIS LAMPROU (Panolabrou) is a visual artist and art consultant coordinator. He studied history and aesthetics of photography at the Photographic Circle, Athens, and research, history and archiving of photography at the Centro di Ricerca e Archiviazione della Fotografia in Spilimbergo in Italy.
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He works between Athens, Italy and Belgium. He cooperates with organizations like Greek Literary and Historical Archive (ELIA ΜΙΕΤ) and Euromare, companies like COCO-MAT, METKA the business unit of MYTILINEOS S.A, (ΔΕΗ A.E) the Public Power Corporation S.A.(PPC), Thenamaris (Ships Management) and support the handicrafts Holy Ginger and FILMORA.
He collaborated for creating art projects with the National Technical University of Athens, the Hellenic Ministry of Citizen Protection, OAED (the Greek Manpower Employment Organisation), the Museum Dr.Guislain, the Center of research and archival of photography (CRAF) and the artists Socos and Ioannis Georgakakis.
For his workshop in art and photography collaborates with Buon Vento in Italy which organize courses in Schinoussa, Tilos, Milano, Bologna.
“His photographic approach stems from straight photography and his practice is tightly knit with the pursuit of showing the underlying sensitivities of subject matters whose presence is often obscured by preconceptions. Being fueled by an ‘active inertia’, he confronts complex issues, such authority and the state, mental illness, nudity and social norms with the intention of inviting a mode of broader understanding. Αttracted by Paradox confronting pragmatism and using suggestiveness as one of his main tools to delineate it, his thematic scope covers a wide spectrum focusing on natural human presence and intimate urbanism.” by Alexandra Athanasiadou, curator on photography & researcher in image theory.
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AWARDS
2010, Second prize winner at the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize in the National Portrait Gallery in London with his work Portrait of my British Wife.
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Statement;
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“Through photography we perceive perpetually moments for qualitative viewing. It describes our relationship with the present and explains the value of memory as the distance between presence and ignorance.”
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Panayiotis Lamprou work is dedicated to the research of pure photography. While recognizing that vision records the extent feasible - in order to become aware of the life that surrounds us - he constructs his photographic images without interacting with his theme and lets the space and its light to be read as the identity by the viewer.
He synthesizes his images measuring through his influences. Josef Sudek, Walker Evans, Eugene Atget, Diane Arbus, Guido Guidi. His own identity emerges according to the evolution of his philosophical awareness, like being in a constant dialogue [with life]; a dialogue that needs to be constantly evident in the real world.
Time is important at the moment of capture, when expression is intimately involved with life with the intention to go beyond the human artificial time. The titles of his photographs are between their literal meaning and the real view of the photograph. It is a way to ground the reading of the image and give rise to the constructed verbal symbolism of the Word;
Panayiotis Lamprou has a persistent relation to the square frame; appreciates the restrictions of its shape, which challenges him to find ways of liberating the subject’s presence despite the surrounding narrowness. He perceives the square format as the eye’s pupil and he photographs in full frame, which values the black contour of the negative as the boundary of writing and reading.
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His work reflects personal, social and creative concerns, always with the same working approach, at the level of vision. The story behind an image is not the goal but rather an occasion to gain knowledge from the lived experience.
He approaches a symbolic story in a conceptual and sentient way at the same time; a social story as the point of reference of a continuous war. What interests him the most is what happens behind the front lines -the subject comes after research which stares at the core of the social evolution. Creatively themed to fashion, science and architecture. The sensibility of the world he observes imposes itself to the body of his work.
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He persists dialectically, that the photographer’s way of viewing is the quality reference of visual language. The variety of the photographer’s themes connects at this point with the dramatic representations of life. It is realized that the visual arts are expressed with criterion the harmonious management of proportions of systems that they evolve. The visual art reality is tangible and involves qualitative reasonable approaches in order to create a new reading in matter.
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“What motivates the artist in order to achieve a work is a natural instinct and a metaphysical intention to meet the internal light which feels as an intimate relationship. As an observer who experiences and appreciates the grace of incarnation and translates into icons the phenomena of existence.”
Manifesto;
The old fisherman
The old fisherman told me:
Listen to the steps of others, but don’t play the mime.
Go from rock to rock to find the Minotaur.
It seems that life has the color blues.
When I heard the secret I understood
how to follow the labyrinth of life.
I have a sword made of 4 elements.
Fire: heart with courage
Air: stomach without anger
Water: chest with kindness
Earth: shoulders without vanity
I believe.
I can look at the Minotaur in the eye.
The laws of soul guide me to the labyrinth.
The soul experience incarnation.
The labyrinth could be a drawing on the sand.
An ant is walking on the drawings and disturbing it.
I had drawn it with details and its walls lead to the Minotaur.
An ant made me see the labyrinth from above.
Maybe I see like a God now. The lines are geometrical.
God said: with geometry we have constructed the world.
The ant is only searching obviously for winter food.
It crosses the labyrinth without realising me.
Perhaps nature teaches Irony
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> Hasselblad 501cm with 80mm + 50mm
> Film KODAK;
B/W T-MAX 400 & Color Portra NC 160/400
> Scanner Flextight Imacon X5
​"If the image of the actual is obvious then the image of the photograph appears obvious.
The literal and the transfer so become one. The interpretation, is based solely on how much
one can endure to see."
Prints are available through Mutual Art .
For print sales please contact artworksales@mutualart.com
Limited Editions 1/4 in four sizes: 120x120cm, 85x85cm, 50x50cm, 22x22cm
The printing process used is the Digital Chromogenic Fujicolor Crystal Archive Print, whereas the scanning is made by the Hasselblad Imacon X5 scanner. The photographic films are the KODAK PORTRA 120 and the KODAK TMAX.
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REPRESENTATIVE
MUTUAL ART - ARTIST PENSION TRUST - APT EUROPE has the largest global collection of contemporary art, comprising 13,000 artworks from 2,000 select artists in 75 different countries. With additional commitments totaling 40,000 artworks, the collection is growing by more than 2,000 each year, as artworks are deposited by artists chosen by APT’s distinguished international Curatorial Team. APT has representative offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, Leipzig, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mexico City and Amman, in addition to Artist Relation Managers all around the world. In 2012, APT successfully accelerated expansion into Asia in partnership with Simon Murray & Company, a prestigious pan-Asian investment fund management firm with Asian business expertise accumulated over four decades.
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COLLECTIONS
CRAF (Centro di Ricerca e Archiviazione della Fotografia)
BENAKI Museum
Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki
Private Collections
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