ANGELAKOPOULOS BROS
Dimitris and Petros are twin artists who work together in a small studio in nature, just outside Athens. They create contemporary art. Their shared studio is the space where these works are produced, often referred to as objects. They live and work in a place where nature dominates and life seems to belong to an earlier era. In this environment, traditional tavernas play an important role. They carefully observe everything that happens around them, yet they do not remain passive spectators, but instead take an active role. Their work holds significance within contemporary art.
In their studio, sheep bells hang on the walls, while sports sunglasses and airtight, sealed military meals are placed on wooden contemporary artworks. All these elements coexist and create an environment. Their works refer to the land, living beings, mountains, shepherds, wooden fishing boats, but also to a sense of survival, emergency supplies, military vacuum-sealed food mre, and many other things they encounter in their surrounding reality.
Dimitris and Petros use industrial materials and avoid traditional artistic media, such as worn wooden planks, iron, tar, film photographs, and images from old VHS cameras. They do not focus on the cleanliness of the surface, but on the concept itself. Large surfaces are stained and saturated with materials such as tar, an industrial substance that was once used to waterproof wooden vessels. The processes of sanding, striking, and soiling the surface resemble choreography more than painting. Their art draws elements from Arte Povera and Dadaism, but it is not limited to the aesthetic of poor materials. Instead, it focuses on the transformation of matter, the continuation of technique, and the physical exhaustion required by the act of creation. At the same time, one can see many ready-made works in their studio, emphasizing that their works are simply what they observe around them.
Perhaps all of this is merely a series of quick notes. Notes of raw reality, recordings of material, traces of an already existing world. There is no narrative, only surfaces that bear witness to time, friction, and action. Perhaps they are not creating something new. They are simply placing it at the boundaries of contemporary art.