Both Truth and Not - Dimitrios Ikonomou

Isnotgallery proudly presents Dimitrios Ikonomou's first solo exhibition.

Ikonomou is concerned with perception as opposed to reality: the mind’s need to organize, to find patterns in what are ostensibly random sensory inputs. The world is chaos, and only finds order through the mind’s filters. In this exhibition, Ikonomou explores this premise through three different conceptual series.

For his Totem Series, Ikonomou was inspired by man’s earliest attempts to create a symbolic connection with his physical environment. Each totem is structured along the mathematical proportions of human facial features, designed to abstract the recognition of the face by the mind’s eye upon first glance. However, upon further examination the facial outlines become clear within the sculptures, and once the face is recognized it cannot be unseen. The totems are designed to create this specific, jarring and elucidating moment of recognition of human patterns within the abstract; a reflection of how the human mind yearns to create something tangible from the incomprehensible. The sculptures are constructed with uncoated iron, emphasizing man’s inextricable connection with the physical world.

For his Light Portrait Series, Ikonomou focuses on the mind’s need to create a framework for disorder, to break the world down into conceptually manageable segments. Beauty in the world is not inherent, but perceived. It is the artist’s duty to facilitate this perception by framing the chaos of the natural world in such a way that the mind can construct an aesthetic representation of the random. Inspired by photographs of cells under a microscope, Ikonomou uses glass as the implication of a border of focus for the mind to locate patterns and aesthetic imagery within the random interactions of shape and color.

In his Drip Series, Ikonomou attempts to visually recreate the human process of memory. The nature of human memory is inherently paradoxical: each time an event is recalled, the memory of the initial event is altered slightly, warped and reshaped by the context in which it is being remembered. A memory, recalled enough times, bears minimal resemblance to the objective event being remembered; it is crystallized into something different entirely. The more often a memory is revisited, the more it changes. The sculptures are created by pouring layer upon layer of epoxy resin over certain objects; the objects representing the initial ‘memory event,’ each new layer of resin representing another occasion of the event being remembered.

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Dimitrios Ikonomou was born on February 1st, 1989, in Baltimore, Maryland to a Greek father and a Cypriot mother.

During his childhood Ikonomou lived in multiple cities around the United States before relocating with his family to Cyprus in 1999, then to London, then finally Brussels, Belgium before returning to Cyprus. He studied Art History and Creative Writing at Brown University in the United States, and continued to Sweden to study Industrial Design at Umea Institute of Design. Following the completion of his studies, Ikonomou worked as a commissioned sculptor for Piet Hein Eek Studio in Eindhoven, Holland, creating busts of immense proportions out of waste material from Eek’s workshop.

Opening: Wednesday October 7th, 2015 @ 8pm
Until: October 24th, 2015

Opening Hours
Tuesday- Friday: 10:30-12:30 & 16:30-19:00
Saturday: 10:00-13:00