Yiannis Adamakos

The Space Between Us

July 16, 2011 - September 12, 2011

Poros

Virvili Square
18020 Poros Island
Greece

(+30) 697 9989 684

Opening Hours
Mon-Sun:
11.00-13.00 & 19.00-23.00

Yiannis Adamakos was born in Pyrgos, in 1952. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under the painters Dimitris Mytaras and Panayotis Tetsis (1973-1978). He continued his independent art studies in Paris (1978-81). He has taught drawing and painting in the Chalkis Art Workshop and the Vakalo College of Art and Design. In 2008, his monogram, Yiannis Adamakos: Paintings 1977-2007, was published by Agra Publications. Since 1978, he has exhibited his artwork in solo and group exhibitions, in Greece and abroad. His artwork is in both private and public collections. He lives and works in Athens and the island of Tinos.

What is interesting about Adamakos' work these days is not the narration as such, but the manner in which he responds to the external world and to human nature, from which all particular forms of work arise. Naturally, one does not look for neo-expressionist elements in his work, but any expressionist painting elicits an almost physical reaction in the viewer. His works express emotional experiences which are rendered in non-realistic colors, with yellows and reds taken from fierce human passion. When one actually feels the physical reaction, this theory is confirmed.

Despite all the subtle alterations in the style of his painting, the images in Adamakos' works are capable of forcing memory to broaden the field of meaning, without obviously distorting the normal shape of the natural landscape. And this is artistic mastery. The perception of place has a psychological dimension as it is closely tied to every viewer's changing moods and that is why it is not a specific, objective technique. The artist adopts traditional forms and tries to use these to convey an objective expression of an inner affair and in this way to give it true existence.