Kostis Velonis
Kostis Velonis
Born in Athens, 1968. Studied stage direction at the Stavrakos School and then Visual Arts, Aesthetics, Technologies and Artistic Creation at the University of Paris VIII-Vincennes (Maitrise, D.E.A.), as an Onassis Foundation grant scholar. He continues with cultural and humanitarian studies (1999-2000) at the London Consortium (Birkbeck College, I.C.A., A.A.). He is professor of Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens. He practices sculpture. He uses materials such as wood, felt, plywood, artificial leather and ready-made objects in his work, examining the psychological transitions of the human being in a constantly changing world in which estrangement prevails, as well as insecurity and dissociation. In this way sculpture becomes a means of understanding but also a tool for the introspection of external reality, via the artist-mediator’s ascetic and melancholy gaze. Velonis appropriates the codes of modernist design, crossing it with elements of European and Arabic folklore, suburban domestic aesthetics and architecture, plus an ideological and utopian language of the avant-garde of the early 20th century.
He has exhibited his work internationally in important group and solo exhibitions (Biennale de Lyon, 2007, Brussels Biennial for Contemporary Art, 2008, Athens Biennale, 2009, Loneliness on Common Ground: How Can Society Do What Each Person Dreams, National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2010, Thessaloniki Biennale, 2011 et al.). Has curated contemporary art exhibitions. From 2000-2004 was the co-publisher of the website www.art-omma.org.