Catalogue documenting a recent series of works by the Greek American artist, which blends painting, sculpture, and photography. In his practice, Gerasimos Floratos plays with the idea of site-specificity, and is strongly inspired by the
Situationist concept of psychogeography. With a text by Kathy Noble.
“His paintings, which Floratos describes as psychogeographies—a term coined by Guy Debord in 1955 to explore how different places and situations affect human feeling and behavior, inspired by the French writer Charles Baudelaire's concept of the
flâneur—morph his interior landscapes with elements from the exterior world, weaving snippets of reality into fictional terrains. […] Floratos's aesthetic education incorporated a variety of things: New York street art, non-classical dance and movement such as capoeira, cartoons, television, folk art, and contemporary artists he discovered, then later met—including Brian Belott, Eddie Martinez, and
Nicola Tyson—alongside historical work by
Maria Lassnig and Lee Lozano, artists who were overlooked for much of their lives. Floratos is also inspired by artists working outside the structures and networks of the mainstream contemporary art world.”
Kathy Noble
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Armada, Milan, from November 22, 2017, to January 20, 2018.
The paintings and sculptures of Greek American Gerasimos Floratos (born 1986 in New York, where he lives and works) play with the idea of site specificity and the notion of what it means to be “rooted” in a single place. His works employ psycho-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.
