Konstantinos Argyroglou Argyropoulos (b. 1998, Athens) develops a practice that focuses on intimacy, care and subjectivity through the prism of memory.

Through his work Konstantinos explores ways of revisiting his childhood memories both physical and emotional via an embodied approach, contributing to a wider economy of care in the field of learning difficulties and dyslexia.

Education

MA Painting 2020-2022

• Royal College of Art

BA (Hons) Fine Art Mixed Media

• University of Westminster

UAL Foundation in Art & Design

• University for the Creative Arts Canterbury

Grants

• 2021 The Elizabeth Greenshields Grant, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation | 1st Grant, Painting

My work unravels as a series of painted images that incorporate and condense multiple visual compositions, deriving from recorded past moments, fleeting memories and anamnesis. Through painting, I create multilayered imagery that depict a young figure, a memory of my younger self – that of a person of unidentifiable gender, always in relation to a singular or a complex of objects within almost mundane domestic environments. The relationship and juxtaposition between the figure and the objects are of great importance, as it encapsulates an oxymoron between solitude and tenderness, standing for the connection between son and mother. My relationship with my mother is in the core of my work, as I constantly aim to rearticulate our interdependence, a condition that was structured while I was growing up within a single-parent family. The closeness and connection that has gradually developed throughout these years, is consolidated in visual and written memoirs, as well as unrecorded stories and inheritance objects. These records form the basis for my painting research and construct a series of elements which populate my painterly domain, creating at times intimate and familiar settings, while at others awkward and ambiguous environments.

In more detail, these objects and spaces such as the sleigh, the table, the balcony and the shower are elements from the past, infused with memory and nostalgia; they are aspects from my childhood that carry with them warmth, safety, at times loneliness and vulnerability, yet are always moments of care. These encounters transform through painting into entities of their own, always carrying an autobiographical character but in a strange way stuck in between my desire to remember and recall, and my urgency to invent a reality that can feel safe again. They are simultaneously tender and harsh. For that reason, the element of transparency developed through the brushwork, the multiplicity of washes, both play a pivotal role in the construction of these images, as they allow me to create a situation that oscillates between past and present, fusing object with subject into a moment that feels equally static and transient. The use of a combination between oil and watercolours helps me to build layers of colour that get soaked into the canvas creating a dense, washed out yet clear depiction of rituals and everyday situations, such as a dinner, an outdoor play, a pose with a sentimental object and a bedtime bath.

The mundane, acts of repetition and banal poses, are of great interest to me, as these visual compositions work as a diary yet without necessarily following a chronological order or reflecting a reality, but actually constructing a new hybrid situation that allows my painted figure to embark onto these narratives and become a hero within them. This is a ghost figure, a trace of the past but also a character of his own, who moves throughout the different memory settings by the use of objects which are passed down generation after generation creating a link within the family that condenses time in one image. “