BOY ON DOLPHIN

Concept

The work of the sculptor Kostas Pagomenos

The second half of the 20th century, witnessed the emergence of a number of nature-related art works which are today generally found under category of Environmental Art. In their variety Land art, Earth art, Eco art, Green art etc., finding their formal origins in movements such as Art Nouveau or Organic art, draw upon the ideological background, as set between others by the need for a return to Nature, the expressed resentment to the machine, the machine-age, industrialization, urbanization, the culture of consumption or the aesthetics of plastic, etc.
Seeking in its various unities to uncover the vital powers of existence, the resistances of life’s energy and the mechanisms of survival, the recent work of Kostas Pagomenos, belongs in many ways to this ‘family’ of Environmental art.
Thus, a central unity of his work deals with the representation of living beings from the world of plants and the sea world. These beings, are shown in a multiplicity of possible or imaginary transformations, whilst a repeated point of reference in this sculptural microcosm of the biosphere, remains the Seed (unity Germes) in other words, the symbolic and at the same time real, life- emanating nucleus with its concentrated powers of regeneration, the safe-keeper of continuity of every existence .
In works such as the “Political Landscapes”, Pagomenos comments on the aspect of human intervention on Nature, by questioning the ability of the natural life-generating nucleus of every being and its intricate daedalic genetic code to resist and react against the linear, grey, self-destructive logic which Man imposes upon it.
Pagomenos’s references on the issue of man’s ecological conscience does not exclude his chosen technique. The materials he works with are mainly the friendly papier-mache, recycled and natural matter, metals, as also parts of plants, or pieces of wood. However, in a number of his works