ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 24

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Dalia Smayze

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T hodoris Trampas
Lives and works in Athens, Greece

An artist's statement

T

he ongoing search of the human
beings for their own image is found
in the conscious and unconscious
need “to be”.
We are in the depths of an existence
experiencing the loneliness in front of two
empty tables, declaratory of the absence of
“those who never came”. It is waiting and
searching at the same time. It experiences
rejection.
However, the hope that they will come
transfers those human beings to the area of
utopia. With stereotypical moves, with quicklymoving hands and feet and after that, with an
ear-splitting creeping, they try to bridge the
distance between the ideal and the real. A
conflict of wishes upsets the ego, which
wishes to escape from a sense of confinement
by recalling desirable moments of integration
in order to be able to balance. They daydream,
they lead themselves beyond what has
happened to them, they lose themselves
within fantasy, they stand still waiting for
what shall come. In the light, the form loses
its outline, it fills with soil and water, it
struggles to build all of “them” as well as their
own image in the reality that they want to live
and by means of the above-mentioned
archetypal materials, that is the soil and
water, by which human existence on earth
begins. They free themselves from
unconscious internal prohibitions, they break

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the limits of compromise, they clear
themselves, they take any necessary time,
they consciously experience fantasy, they
surrender themselves to a concealed flow,
they travel towards the satisfaction of the
primary need; that of “to be”.
Thodoris Trampas is a visual artist has been
working with performance art and installation
in space. He searches the limits inside and
outside the body; while it moves, it generates
some pace, which affects its relation to the
space, it makes natural sounds, which
sometimes interrupt and sometimes connect
the constant flow. He also uses items and
materials of modern life, such as trash bags
and nylon together with organic materials,
such as soil and water. He changes the
properties of the said materials to give certain
meanings to them, which are related mostly to
the concerns of the human and in general, of
the today’s society. Through improvisation,
the free movement, he lets respiration get into
every cell, recall memories, awaken the
existence. Through experiential reality, he
aims to highlight a human condition as an
endless effort to balance within an “area”,
which is constantly changing in space and
time.

Thodoris Trampas