Gerasimos Floratos: Big Town
18 Nov 2016 - 03 Jan 2017
Pilar Corrias Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition in the UK by New York artist Gerasimos Floratos, bringing together new large scale paintings and works on paper.
A native New Yorker and local to Times Square, Floratos’ practice toys with what it means to be a person on the outside—the other. The works lead us on a psycho-geographic tour of his version of the city hosted by a cast of anthropomorphised characters ranging from bunnies to skyscrapers. They are larger than life projections of Floratos’ slouching alter egos, some more closely resembling him than others, but all sharing an uncanny cartoonish familiarity that belies their autobiographical nature.
Their construction is consistent in its inconsistency. Varying from pre-made aluminium stretchers to found timber, the structure upon which the canvas is fixed is as important as the imagery painted upon them. A thickly applied impasto of primary colours, mixed with detritus from the studio floor, adorns floppy canvases that often drape curtain-like from their stretchers, pointing conspicuously to the effort that went into their assemblage. Their sculptural qualities propel the pieces into the theatrical realm of props, pulling back the metaphorical curtain on the performance of being an artist.
A native New Yorker and local to Times Square, Floratos’ practice toys with what it means to be a person on the outside—the other. The works lead us on a psycho-geographic tour of his version of the city hosted by a cast of anthropomorphised characters ranging from bunnies to skyscrapers. They are larger than life projections of Floratos’ slouching alter egos, some more closely resembling him than others, but all sharing an uncanny cartoonish familiarity that belies their autobiographical nature.
Their construction is consistent in its inconsistency. Varying from pre-made aluminium stretchers to found timber, the structure upon which the canvas is fixed is as important as the imagery painted upon them. A thickly applied impasto of primary colours, mixed with detritus from the studio floor, adorns floppy canvases that often drape curtain-like from their stretchers, pointing conspicuously to the effort that went into their assemblage. Their sculptural qualities propel the pieces into the theatrical realm of props, pulling back the metaphorical curtain on the performance of being an artist.