As featured in Unfolded Magazine Issue 12
Alexander Stavrou
In an attempt to make sense of his natural surroundings, Alexander Stavrou's work explores the dynamics of natural process and the transformation of energy into mass and form. At his first major exhibition, at Rook and Raven, he tells us he is "fascinated with how energy and form can come together, how they become active in a picture or a metaphysical image." It is through the medium of paint, he expresses that fascination, "paint has its own form, structure. Be viewed as a chaotic substance which can become ordered." Crucially, it is dynamic, as it can also "reverberate between being physical and heavy as well as light and ethereal."
In the work entitled 'Information Stratosphere' we view a comet falling, which Alexander likens to "arresting time, reflecting on an unreal cosmological moment which could happen". 2D triangles take your eye through to a heavy mass, "which is sculptural in itself", leaving a trail of hot gases, kinetic energy and movement. The paint is a "pigment suspended in a liquid, there is suspended debris and matter, they too are suspended information."
He is inspired by Michaelangelo, whose work he says "tries to make sense of heavy mass, the weight of lines and so on" and also the works of James Terrell, whose work "focuses on the use of light and space." Of his own work, the "continuous structure and surface of paint lends itself to depicting a presence which evades finite categorisation."
Born in North London and a graduate of the City & Guilds of London Art School, the course,"helped me understand what is really important about stand what is really important about making a work of art and shaped my understanding." There is a slight obsession with the triangle, enamoured by how "simple and humble the shape is, three points on a two-dimensional plane, it reflects the connections which exist within our natural surroundings, elements, all sorts of things." Chaos and order is what connects his work, "drawing from real or imagined natural disasters", in an attempt to "seek out the physical structure of nature."
Interview by Nardip Singh
Images supplied by Rook and Raven
Copyright © Alexander Stavrou
