Apostolos Palavrakis
Beck & Eggeling
2019 EBGE Greek Visual Communication Design Awards
Merit, Book cover
Merit, Book cover
The work of Greek artist Apostolos Palavrakis (b. 1962) is as diverse as the sources from which his artistic work derives. Through drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, his work explores human intellectual and cultural history as well as his own position in the web of social and political realities, while also addressing the ways in which physical reality manifests itself to us. This catalogue was published on the occasion of his exhibition ‘Desire and Disaster’, that took place in late 2018 at Beck & Eggeling gallery, Düsseldorf.
The catalogue is conceived as a POV simulation of what it would look like to see the presented works from up close, through the eyes of an actual viewer — to achieve this, all the installation views have been arranged in a simple, full-page format, so as to not distract the viewer with any negative space at all. The eye is guided from extreme close-ups to wide-angle views, getting a tangible feel of the works’ various employed materials as well as of the way they have been installed. Furthermore, even the typographic elements have been kept at a minimum, omitting page numbering and other information, so as to leave the surface of the page solely for the works themselves.
The catalogue, as an object, is almost functioning as a sculpture in itself. By being covered in a metallic, reflective sheet and trimmed straightly at its edges it is turned into a similarly geometric object, echoing the intense materiality seen in the artist’s own work — especially in the equally reflective central works of this particular exhibition.
