Aggregates, Modules and Accumulators. 2012–18

In around 20 years, Apostolos Palavrakis has significantly developed his style; the sensual-lyrical approach that he pursued in the 1990s has led to a clear, formally almost strict objectivity, in which structure and form is favored over expressive gesture and mythical aura.

And yet, Palavrakis is able to lend his works a dark secret that never fully reveals itself to the viewer. This publication focuses on sculptures and objects from the past six years. Some of the works appear to be like architectural models. In fact, Palavrakis, trained as an architect, develops objects from set pieces of real architecture. The cool elegance and grandeur of the form initially conceal the impossibility of construction, which defies the laws of nature. As hermetic as some of Palavrakis' works may seem, they open wide associative spaces in the history of art, architecture, science, the humanites, and technology. Together, they combine a mythical past, in which there seemed to be only progress, with our technocratic present, in which it has only recently dawned on us that every human achievement carries within itself the potential of destruction and chaos. On our own, what is left for us?

Artist: Apostolos Palavrakis
Editor: Ute Eggeling, Michael Beck
Text: Ute Eggeling, Michael Beck
Design: Beck & Eggeling (Martina Lölhe)

English, German
Hardcover, 30 x 24 cm
68 pages

Available works of the artist

Apostolos Palavrakis, Aggregat I / Element XIII – XVI, 2013/2016, © Apostolos Palavrakis + VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Apostolos Palavrakis, Stairs, 2009-2012, © Apostolos Palavrakis + VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Apostolos Palavrakis, Accumulator 18 (The 5th Element after Kasimir Malewitsch), 2018, © Apostolos Palavrakis + VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Apostolos Palavrakis, untitled, 1999, © Apostolos Palavrakis + VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Associated exhibition

Apostolos Palavrakis. Desire and Disaster

Dusseldorf / 7 September – 27 October 2018

In the exhibition, the artist shows works from his early and later periods within a common conceptual framework. Even though he has consciously chosen to confront the past with the present here,...

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