Multilaterals is an exhibition with a selection of recent work in porcelain and drawings by Konstantino Dregos that explore the more sculptural aspects of the artist’s otherwise painterly practice. Dregos’ practice roots itself in a conceptual process he coins “ruinvention” — an error, an ensuing correction; causing yet another error and still another correction.
At-Large is proud to present his first one-man show in New York. For images and further information please contact Krystofer Kimmel, kk@at-large.gallery
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The practice of Berlin based Greek born artist Konstantino Dregos can take its’ vanguard point from that of a latter day alchemist. Dregos’s body of work shatters any notion that a painted surface or a sculpted body can suggest either a leading narrative or a persuasive form. The picture plane, or the three dimensional volume, has become a battle ground for bruised signifiers and barely recognisable shapes who’s memories cast shadows to places that we will never visit. Konstantino Dregos’s works are blueprints for their own destruction.
It is as if Dregos conjures what may happen when words die and when language collapses under the weight of its’ own meaning.. The loose ends have become an end to themselves. But there are still histories wanting to break out, yearning to tell of their survival and what they might once have been, but instead became. Groping the viewers’ attention in the hope that these works will be saved from doom simply by the act of looking. To contemplate this body of work becomes then, an act of experience and almost, an act of responsibility.
When something becomes useful it ceases to be beautiful - it was mused during the enlightenment, but it also strikes a chord throughout Dregos’ practice. A viewer of knowingness could, perhaps unfairly, decode these heaps of useless information and move on with their day. But that would do a disservice to one’s consciousness rather than allowing oneself the reminder that what these works ultimately are - ...which is the replication of the processes of what is going on inside our minds exactly as we are experiencing them. And therein rests the strength of this body of work. What curse it must be to remember a place that unbuilt and forgot about itself. These works are the survivors of their own making.
They are ultimately orphans and the artist has already put them out in the world and has moved on. They could be construed as the aftermath of a love lost but there is also no measure of sentimentality. That makes these works rarified in an age of super-self-reference. That also makes these works dangerous because they are ultimately not good for us. But they are a necessary reminder that heroes, while in full makeup, are mostly broken and the cost for a good deed also come with blocking out the violence it took to do the right thing.