When Apostolos Yayannos held his solo exhibition E.D.E.M. at the Titanium Gallery in 2010, featuring works of painting and sculpture, he expanded the formal limits of the concerns he first articulated in the ONE WAY exhibition of 2007 (in Athens and Paris). These two exhibitions mark the artist’s transition from gestural painting to meticulous drawing. The thick paste of color and maximalist abstraction that had established him as the leading colorist of his generation now triumphantly hands the baton to pencils and the detailed mapping of composition.
The vertical paintings of his solo exhibition E.D.E.M. emerge from a passionate assemblage of episodes, connecting human achievements with human crimes, greatness with absurdity, and the wonders of civilisation with the imprints of mass culture. Architecture plays a significant role here, rewriting with a new maturity, greater vividness, and with the humor of a more pop approach, the poetry of structures we first saw in the Memory series of 1999. With E.D.E.M., Yayannos dares to explore a new visual language infused with ethical reflection.