Panos Tsagaris

Born in 1979 in Athens (Greece), Panos Tsagaris lives and works in New York and Los Angeles. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design (Vancouver, Canada). In the series of Libération magazine covers entitled For Between the Light and the Darkness We Stand, the artist interrupts the flow of news by replacing it with a symbolic work reflecting what he calls “the gradual disconnection from materiality and the slow awakening of higher consciousness.”

(Source : Paul di Felice)

Panos Tsagaris’ photographic work aims to transcend traditional practices of imagery, by incorporating existing published material with transformative processes, towards the production of symbolic objects that underline our individual and collective struggle with spiritual development. The smooth, fragile and appeasing surface of the gold leaf in the “Golden Newspaper” series, subverts the violence and intensity of the visual imagery, while at the same time its value exemplifies the questionable relation between the self and material wealth.

Therefore, by using the sociopolitical reality of a nation to attest to the struggle of the individual, the work becomes the connecting link of the space between the real and the unconscious. This idea is further expressed in the work “For Between the Light and the Darkness We Stand (CHAOS)”, where the space between the real and the unconscious is not only emphasized via the illuminating process from dark to light, but also expanded in length and size to portray the distance of that space between those two circumstances.

The actual space the work occupies is therefore indicative of the symbolic representation of the distance in stages we need to cover to reach the truth, while the time required for the absorption of the work reflects the temporal element of the process. The degree of struggle visualized in the newspapers where the text is removed, is reversed here and replaced with textual imagery, void of photos, asserting in that way the verbal interpretation of the transformative process. A political phenomenon becomes the vessel through which the need for self-development is highlighted, while the selection of global press covers in the works implicates the universal reach of this condition, and the essence of the element of interconnectedness associated with spiritual growth.

(Source : Artist’s website, Maria Nicolacopoulou)