Artist: Gerasimos Floratos
Exhibition title: Soft Bone Journey
Venue: Armada, Milan, Italy
Date: November 22, 2017 – January 20, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Armada, Milan
Armada presents “Soft Bone Journey”, first solo exhibition in Italy by Gerasimos Floratos.
A first generation Greek American and native New Yorker, Gerasimos Floratos’ paintings and sculptures play with the idea of site specificity and the notion of what it means to be ‘rooted’ in a single place. His works employ pyscho-figurative bodies as mechanisms for charting space in many forms; psychogeography of the globalised world, societies or microcosms built through commonalities of practice, and the internal space of the mind. For the artist, the slouchy alter egos present throughout his work operate as sites for exploring the relationship between the material and psychological bodies. The coded visual language present throughout his practice is partnered with a unique lexicon from which he draws titles for the works and exhibitions.
Within the space hang three large scale oil paintings from the artist’s grandmother’s café-turned-studio on the Greek island of Kefalonia. One of the paintings has been installed free hanging in the middle of the space with photographs attached to the backside. In combination, three new hand carved and painted sculptures from the Floratos’ London studio are presented. A smaller scale piece sits on a plinth constructed from scrap metal found in Armada’s courtyard. This is the first time the artist will exhibit sculpture and photographs alongside paintings.
