"Compass" Painting

Iason Venetsanopoulos approaches painting as an improvisatory activity that unveils memories and experiences, which can be rendered accessible through the creative process. Such an improvisatory activity, though, should not be confused with an agentless surrender to randomness, but rather considered as the composition of unforeseeable elements that might spring from the unconscious, from ideas, dreams, feelings, and from the constant interaction with the materials. For Venetsanopoulos there is no particular intention lying behind painting; it is not a matter of conscious choice, but rather of a creative urge, an impulse to give form to thoughts and emotions and to spontaneously draw images seared in memory. Thereby, painting turns into a ritual, a meditative process during which artist and artwork exist as one inseparable whole.

What is most intriguing about his work is the inextricable connection between the painting itself, its materiality and its theme. Every artwork results from an endless strangle and an ongoing experimentation with the medium (whether it is painting, drawing or etching); It is a freestanding entity, subjected to the unique circumstances of its production and determined by the materials chosen for its execution. Venetsanopoulos prefers to work with natural materials such as handmade paper from India* natural ink from China, coloured inks from Egypt and Japanese gouache, tracing beauty in the mistakes and flaws that occur while painting.

The artist sets up fragmented narratives – inspired by ancient myths, personal memories and fictional stories – that challenge the viewers in their search for a complete and intelligible meaning, like a haiku poem that is always left open to interpretation. This does not betray an aim to provoke for the sake of being provocative; Venetsanopoulos seems to invite us to depart from the conventional language that can entrap us within the borders of a seemingly meaningful but rather poor, cold and detached realm, in order to access an unsettling but, still, sincerely personal field.

Venetsanopoulos’s visual vocabulary consists of uncanny images of creatures that stand at the threshold between human and animal, male and female, floating in an indefinable space with a humorous touch and a latent eroticism. These strange, symbolic figures reflect his belief that any differences between opposing identities or forces are complementary and interrelated.