er Evangelos Mikropoulos captures and reflects rays
of light on his canvas much like the Aegean Sea cap-
rored through a watered prism of pristine blue. Mikropoulos,
a native of Athens, imbues his paintings with a fluidity that
gives rise to a sensuous richness of hue, yet his corresponding
dispersal of light and display of color is infused with a strong
conceptual streak.
cies of perception from masses of dark and muted color. In many
of his works Mikropoulos suffuses time with a subliminal drama
detailing the havoc its passage reaps on emotional and envi-
ronmental issues. Through painterly surfaces that Mikropoulos
raises up with vigorous and quite visible brush strokes-- as well
as sparse integration of foreign objects such as mesh netting and
bits of metal-- he tears away at the constructive aspects of shape
and form to reveal the depths of a darker vision that plummets
beneath the surface in his search for "the frail existence...balanc-
ing between layers of colour."
for controversy and a practitioner of the art of disputation,
who perpetrated the doctrine that all multiplicity, as well
as motion, are illusory. Mikropoulos' pictorial response to
this ancient tenet is present in his painting, Helixes. In this
evocative abstraction there are elements of composition,
technique and emotion that are as apparent as the piece's
symmetrical lines and sumptuous colors. Yet within these
varying components there is a mystical hint that the work
is an imaginative, holistic rendering of the famed sixteenth
century windmills on the island of Mykonos.
in the discipline of build-
ing design, Mikropoulos
has devoted the past
decade exclusively to his
art and the construction
of a body of work that
explores an amalgama-
tion of transforming imagery. Mikropoulos writes, "everything
is changing into a new element: intersecting axes, imaginary
landscapes, concrete shapes." When the artist is not painting, he
writes poetry that echoes his visual aesthetic of placing the highest
value not on the object created, but on the journey itself: "Without
remembrance, I stroll on history. Passions become paler, a sud-
den gain." Mikropoulos' journeys continue to originate from
his hometown of Athens where light radiates and is absorbed,
producing a dream-like sensation that inspires and penetrates his
paintings.