“Seeing comes before words.
The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”*
- John Berger

Haris Vlahos’s work consists of detailed and chaotic large-scale drawings that compose a mapping of himself and his habitual impulses. He composes mixed media large-scale surfaces in which cartoon-like and realistic, fluorescent animals protagonize to evoke both aggression and vulnerability. Accumulating layers of photographs, readymade objects and painted figurations, these works aim to prompt the viewer to fantasize life-forms inhabiting hidden corners of a libidinal underworld. Part archive, part notebook for further developments, the structure of these mural-like drawings functions as pathways to a speculative re-working of the artist’s lived experience. The young artist discovered a character-developing method while participating in live action roleplaying games (LARPs). He soon realized that roleplaying and character development processes leak into his everyday reality, bleeding out of the diegetic framework of larping. Four years ago, he changed his social media name from Babis to Haris, and he tattooed his ex-name on his chest. Vlahos improvises on a personality split between Babis and Haris, both derivatives of his birth name Charalambos. A two-tone skin of a zebra is consumed by a leopard. His paintings constitute self-analyzing methods to flesh out a future wherein the split selves haunting his social communication befriend one another. As Vlahos states: “I managed to zoom out and I understood the power of having the ability to build oneself as a character of a game - the potentiality of being optional. I was trying to discover facts about myself and found out that I was instead forging aspects of myself. FORGET, ACCEPT, FIGHT, ACTIVATE, DECODE, CONTROL, MASTER, COMMAND. Again: LEARN, UNLEARN, RELEARN” *Berger, J.(1972), Ways of seeing, Penguin Press, London

Visiting hours: Thu-Thu-Fri-Sat-Sun (daily except from Monday & Wednesday), 17:00-21:00 ULTRA PLAIN, Athens School of Fine Arts, Kolokotroni 4, Syntagma, Athens

About ULTRA PLAIN ULTRA PLAIN, the new exhibition space of ASFA/LAB12 in the center of Athens, presents the solo show of Haris Vlahos, zebRAWR. Athens School’s of Fine Arts 12th Laboratory of Expanded Media in collaboration with EFKA (Single social security institution), has created a pilot project space with an experimental program of exhibitions and educational events in TSMEDE’s ex building, in Syntagma, Kolokotroni 4 Str. The space was used during the 6th Athens Biennale for many events. ULTRA PLAIN’s goal is to connect young artists with their city’s everyday life in one of the most popular parts of its center. ULTRA PLAIN, as a name, is a direct comment and an active position supporting art’s Diversity and Proximity to everyday life as well as it aims to eliminate prejudices that tend to consider contemporary art as unapproachable.