CACT E-STUDIO
Panagiotis Loukas was born in 1975 in Athens, where he lives and works. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and has won an award as an upcoming artist from AICA HELLAS in 2007.
Panagiotis Loukas’ particularly interesting and highly audacious artistic search, moves between a reactive and effective mixture of mysticism and black humor. His nature, along with a relentless ironic lyricism, becomes apparent through a personal iconography and mythology reflected in his work. Above all, the versatile talent of the artist becomes implicit, revealing the excellent craftsmanship of a painter who creates large-scale paintings on surfaces where colors and beauty rejoice. The paintings of Loukas are overwhelmingly characterized by their enigmatic theme and noisy filling of the surface and support a visual language where realism and fantasy join forces to an unexpected dialogue. The surfaces of his works, lavishly decorated by the artist in an absolute horror vacui, match up with an unparalleled way the real and the imaginary, the high and the worthless, the traditional and the revolutionary. His worlds, however, are not at all familiar to us and seem to have sprung from a fantastic and an exceptionally surreal journey to the land of illusion. While these worlds are presented idyllic and imaginative, there is always and everywhere a sense of evil and the unexplained lurking. On every place of the painting’s surface one can locate various fascinating microcosms that are allegorical representations pertaining to symbolic meanings. The passage of time, the impermanence of life, the fragility of human existence, the decay of matter and finally death, are hints that unfold through images and symbols, such as candles (lit and extinguished), the exotic-and non-birds, the bizarre plants, the skulls (vanitas) etc. In addition, the titles of Lukas’ works, which often leave satirical innuendos, on the one hand create deceptive narratives and on the other remain unclear, inviting the viewer into a game of divination, adventure of image and speech.
In his work What you lack is experience, the viewer is confronted with a captivating dual world where forms deservedly occupy their place in the unfamiliar space. The entire surface of the painting is converted into a field of vision, exploration and imagination. Maintaining a veil of mystery, a psychedelic mood on representation of the scenery and an attraction to the intermediate worlds, Loukas initiates a number of mental processes in the presence of emblematic metaphors that intertwine in a single composition. The prevailing mystical atmosphere combined with the artist’s ironic mood is activated and the viewer somehow participates in the deposition of the artist’s personal universe. In a very idyllic setting an indolent Satyr is indulged in reverie, surrounded by three animals that seem to appear to live stoically together and to enjoy the sinister scenario of chaos, while a series of grotesque figures and symbols, such as a pyramid with the eye, a construction reminding a pair of compasses, a nail with a frock coat, and a skull, compose a narrative open to multiple interpretations.
Ε.P.
