Vangelis Katsanos is an abstract expressionist painter from Greece who creates predominantly with oil on canvas.
His portfolio brings to mind the works of Zbigniew Beksiński, with their dark motifs and distorted human forms. He entertains themes of the fleetingness of physicality and distortion of identity.
Katsanos aims to provoke strong emotional responses in viewers, “to create an immediate and unsettling experience, encouraging slow looking within a fast-scrolling environment.” In the age of quick, easily digestible, mass-generated content, creators like him are beacons of hope for fine art. The key to preserving authenticity and originality is not to avoid spaces of modern media but to join them and the discourse around art and its many fascinating forms.
Katsanos uses painting as a medium to express deeply rooted emotions and states of mind that emerge from nothingness as semi-material, faceless, tormented souls trapped behind a veil of reality. These gritty, contorted, and at times mutilated presences appear only partially human. They are visceral visions of lethargic nightmares, caught either in the process of taking human shape or as disintegrated bodies reduced to fragments of spirit.
The artist mentions that his work “focuses on the materiality of the human form and its distortion as a way to express subconscious states.” The primary goal is to challenge the viewer’s perception, forcing them to look beyond the physical body and instead reach its essence. “The figures are unstable, fragmented, and physically intense,” he says, “inviting the viewer to confront the body not as an image, but as matter.”
Read our “Camouflage” issue in full
RAWGUE.’s 4th issue delved into the grey, moody, and cold atmosphere of winter. Yet it did not sink into the depths of madness or depression. Instead, it embraced this season of hibernation, allowing 31 artists from all over the world to present their timid work beneath a veil of quiet beauty.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
