In 2020 Michail Parlamas continued to work on ten unfinished large-scale paintings dating from the second year of his degree studies with the Greek painter and professor at the Higher School of Fine Arts of Thessaloniki Vangelis Dimitreas. They were completed within two years (2020-2022) at Studio 1, owned by collector George Vogiatzoglou and formed the Selfiesh series, which includes Selfie in kitchen Dorm.
With Selfiesh, Parlamas experiments for the first time in his painting with digital art, exploring how common tools such as tablets and apps can contribute to the evolution of contemporary portraiture and figurative painting. Based on the distortion of his own selfies, he creates a fragmented painted self-portrait with multiple perspectives and overlapping planes, reminiscent of what we see in analytical cubism. Nevertheless, he chooses to maintain the naturalistic style of his human figures, which allows him to maintain an aesthetically pleasing grotesque style while giving him the freedom to structure an immersive, open narrative around it.
Photos from the group exhibition This is Not My Beautiful House, curated by Nina Kotamanidou.
The pasted painted sensory organs, from selected selfies of unknown people, without being treated as fragments or overlapping the self-portrait, remind us of synthetic cubism. A cubism that acquires a surreal quality, as the interweaving of layers transforms the self-portrait into a portrait, almost reaching the limits of biomorphism. As elements of the composition, they act as a counterweight between how individuals perceive society and how society perceives them.
The series delves into deep emotional scars as a universal existential theme of modern life, transcending cultural, religious, social, or racial boundaries. Within the interiors, which encase human figures, they serve as of daily routines and emotional reservoirs.
Main photo: Michail Parlamas, Selfie In Kitchen Dorm, 2023. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 190 X 210 cm
“This is Not My Beautiful House” was the second exhibition in the context of “The Athenian Way / Athens Intersection”, coordinated by George Georgakopoulos with APART Art Research and Applications, in collaboration with F.O.T.A Friends of Trigono Athens and CHEAPART.
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