George Lappas

Sculptures and Light Installations

October 4, 2019 - November 15, 2019

Athens

19 Patriarchou Ioakim
4th floor
10675 Athens
Greece

(+30) 210 7235 226

Opening Hours
Tue, Thu, Fri: 11.00-15.00 &17.00-20.00
Wed: 11.00-15.00
Sat: 11.00-15.00

1950 - 2016. As a Greek of the diaspora, George Lappas makes intensive use of geography and mapping in his work, in which landscapes turn into a map of the world. His life was marked by his countless journeys, starting from his birthplace, Cairo, in Egypt in 1950. In 1958 the family moves to Greece, where he completes his secondary education in Athens. From 1969 to 1973 he studies clinical psychology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, USA, going into research and participating in psychiatric programmes at clinics in Salem, Oregon, as well as San Francisco and San Diego in California. In 1974 he travels to India on a Watson Foundation grant to document Indian sculpture and architecture. He visits Afghanistan and Persia. In 1975 he studies at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and continues with a seminar in Italy. From 1976 to 1981 he studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Yannis Pappas and Giorgos Nikolaidis, graduating with distinction. In 1984 he obtains a French state scholarship for the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studies sculpture. In 1986–87 he works in France and England. In 1991, a Cartier Foundation schol- arship takes him to Jouy-en-Josas. Between 1987 and 2016 he teaches as Professor of sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts, introducing an entire new and groundbreaking method for training young artists. In the meantime he continues to travel to Canada, China, Japan, Russia, USA, Brazil, Korea and all over Europe, not giving up this insatiable curiosity which leads him to his own utopia.

The exhibition "Sculptures and Light Installations" presents ten of George Lappas' best known sculptures and installations. George Lappas' work occupies a special place in Greek art of the second half of the twentieth century. It accomplishes the transition from the pure sculpture of modernism to the critical reflexivity and relationality of contemporary art. His works represent a study of the relationship of the body with space and time, a reflection on the relationships of the past and future of sculpture, and the structural parameters of the plastic arts and of architecture in relation to place.

Large and small-size figures of fabric, plastic, neon lights and steel make up his sculptural world. These figures are 'in motion' or stationary. The natural body is abolished; thought, memory, and narration work according to an inner logic, without perceptible consequences. The unexpected materials create a sense of paradox, of the uncanny, recalling unconscious dream connections and indecipherable associations.