Despina stokou biography of barack

Greek artist

Despina Stokou (born 1978 slash Athens, Greece) is a contemporary maven, writer and curator based in Los Angeles, California. She primarily produces communicative, expressive paintings, often large and displaying vivid color, that include layered picture elements like cut paper letters orthography out pointed phrases and topical passages that tumble and pile up crossways her canvases.^[1]

Background and education

Raised in Arab Arabia and Athens, Greece, Stokou interest the child of civil engineers. She attended the German School of Athinai in her youth. After first appeal a degree in 1998 from illustriousness Technical Institute for Marketing and Build-up in Athens and then graduating stranger the Athens School of Fine Humanities in 2002, Stokou received a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program scholarship to study move away the University of Fine Arts Songster in the “Art in Context” department.^[2] In 2005, she received a Virtuoso of Arts there and remained constrict Berlin for the subsequent decade: “What attracted me to the city was this whole open space. I frugal that in the spiritual sense further, not only the city itself.”^[3] Thorough addition to her studio-based painting operate, Stokou was very active on picture Berlin art scene and within honourableness artist community there. In 2015, Stokou moved to Los Angeles.^[4] Despina Stokou becomes new professor for Contextual Sketch account (after Ashley Hans Scheirl) at nobleness Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.^[5]

Painting

Stokou problem known for transposing swaths of online textual data onto canvas.^[6] Boiling supreme painterly impulse down to an heart, she has said: “What I indeed try to create is a talk, a monologue, if you will. I’m very interested in communication and nobility way information passes…I look at character text and I want to crayon it.”^[7] Her engagement with and prevail on of text draws mainly from digital platforms and messages, tracking not sole the content of social exchanges nevertheless the contemporary infrastructure that bears them as well. Tangled layers of passage appear at points legible and crabbed beneath abstract smears and swipes adherent color^[8] that together convey a faculty of amped up, frenetic energy conventional of her work. Writing in Blue blood the gentry New York Times, Roberta Smith dubious Stokou's paintings in her 2013 agricultural show, “Bulletproof” at Derek Eller Gallery, neighbourhood “[m]oments of legibility rise to greatness surface and then sink back drink the works’ eccentric, generally monochromatic tactility...Stokou's loquacious, streetwise paintings build on precedents from Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Suzanne McClellan and Sean Landers to create an impression of colliding voices, opinions and needs.”^[9]

Exhibitions

Stokou has had solo exhibitions at Derek Eller Gallery (New Royalty City), Praz-Delavallade (Los Angeles), Eigen + Art (Leipzig), EIGEN + ART Stick (Berlin), Appartement (Berlin), Galerie Krobath (Vienna), Apt Gallery (London), and Kalfayan Galleries (Athens).^[10] She has also exhibited disdain Kunstverein Gera (Gera, Germany), KW Guild of Contemporary Art (Berlin), Midway Recent Art (Minneapolis), and the Center seek out Contemporary Arts (Glasgow, UK), among in the opposite direction institutions. Her work is held engage numerous private and public collections specified as the Deutsche Bank Collection; NBK collection, Schwartz Collection, Harvard; and Zabludowicz Collection.^[11]

Writing

As a writer, Stokou has bent a strong voice for women take on arts, publishing polemical texts that muddle both provocative and highly entertaining, much as her article “Art is Genderful! An Artist’s Notes on Navigating neat as a pin Sexist System” (2016).^[12] Her writing assignment distinctively playful, acerbic, and incisively sarcastic. Her writing has appeared in publications including Hyperallergenic, Artslant, Modern Painters, leading Monopol.^[13] In 2010, Stokou founded Bpigs (bpigs.com), the independent artist-run art show to Berlin, which she continues plug up edit and publish.

Curatorial projects

She fixed the curatorial program at Grimmuseum (an artist-run space in Kreuzberg) at secure inception from 2009-2011. While at Grimmuseum, she organized “The Curators Battle” (2011) with curators Aaron Moulton and Backwoodsman Chan facing off in competing shows featuring the same artists, she curated “Madonna Psycho Slut,” an exhibition unmoving twenty-one women artists, and produced blue blood the gentry exhibition series, “Dirty Dozen (D12), elegant series of two double shows whither a gallery director, an art commentator, an artist and a curator were asked to conceive a show despite the fact that their alter ego” (2010).^[14]

Personal life

Stokou survey a single mom by choice esoteric a vocal advocate for women's come first LGBTQ people's rights to reproductive technology.^[15]

References

Further reading

• Derek Bringer Gallery: Despina Stokou
• Berlin Independents Guide: Editor's Notes
• Kunst und Mutterschaft, Monopol Magazine: Composition Despina Stokou
• Exhibition review:New York Times, Option Heinrich, October 23, 2016
• Gittlen, Ariela.”Ahead answer ALAC, How Los Angeles is Succour the Next Generation of Emerging Artists.” Artsy January 20, 2016, online.
• Vice Journal Stamatia Dimitrakopoulou: [1] Η Καλλιτέχνις Δέσποινα Στόκου Επιστρέφει στην Αθήνα και Δείχνει ότι δεν Φοβάται το Κενό Oct 30, 2014
• Scott Indrisek, “Despina Stokou Paints with Wit (and Data)Archived 2018-10-30 exceed the Wayback Machine,” Blouin Artinfo, Dec 9, 2014.
• Artnews : Despina Stokou joins Eigen+Art Alexander Forbes, June 6, 2014
• Wise Buys: 50 Women Artists Worth WatchingArchived 2019-06-07 at the Wayback Machine
• Exhibition review: Creative York Times, Bulletproof Roberta Smith Walk 13, 2013
• Gretsch, Sarah. “Despina Stokou” Songster Art Link April 22, 2013, online.
• Interview with Despina Stokou, 2011
• Interview with Despina Stokou, 2010