“In each step, events remind us that we don’t rule nature as someone who would be an observer, as an invader that rules over foreign peoples, but that we belong to it, with our flesh, our blood and our brains…”
-Engels: Discussion on Nature
The sea, how has the sea become
…………………………….
yet, the wave was sweet
where I fell as a child and swam
and even when I was a grown up
as I was looking for shapes in the pebbles
looking for rhythm…
George Seferis
(Greek poet)
I grew up in Belgium. I was fortunate enough to live in an environment full of greenery, with tall trees, and an open valley being in our view everyday. The change of seasons was connected with the colours of the trees, the scent of wood, the freshness of the air and wonderful hikes in the forest.Now I live in Crete, the nearby mountains are barren but full of the scents of the bushes and a plethora of herbs. The sea is in my daily view now. Its blue colour revitalizes and relaxes me. I am a part of Nature and it is within me. I feel as if I am in mid air each time I try to surpass it. I listen to its breath and I feel immensely sad and embarrassed by the destruction contemporary people cause to it. Everyday, I become furious as I feel that the protective shell, which surrounds us, becomes more and more fragile. It is the present that makes me fear and dread the future.
My work couldn’t be uninfluenced. I use recycled and natural materials mostly. My recent work is not only characterized by references but also by obsessions concerning environmental issues, the dangers of mutations, the senseless use of natural resources, the destruction of natural balance. My own voice of protest is my work.
What should one hope for I think! Maybe only love. He, who gets to know nature the way he knows love, wouldn’t let it perish. Nature is a beloved living body, not anyone’s property to be taken advantage of.
– KOSTAS PAGOMENOS
Critical Notes
Since the mid 20th century the realm of Environmental art, is accelerated. In their variety Land art, Earth art, Eco art, Green art etc., finding their formal origins in movements such as Art Nouveau or Organic art, draw upon the ideological background, as set between others by the need for a return to Nature, the expressed resentment to the machine, the machine-age, industrialization, urbanization, the culture of consumption or the aesthetics of plastic, etc.
Seeking in its various unities to uncover the vital powers of existence, the resistances of life’s energy and the mechanisms of survival, the recent work of Kostas Pagomenos, belongs in many ways to this ‘family’ of Environmental art.
Recognizable familiar objects, abstract meanings which acquire shape and form, reformulations of existing inhabitants of the biosphere in possible or imaginary transformations, symbolic compositions, are all aspects of the sculptural world created by Kostas Pagomenos in his artistic exploration on the relationship between Man-Art and Nature, ultimately calling out for our awakening, alerting us to the urgent necessity for the protection of the life-giving core of our very natural existence.
Denise-Chloe Alevizou,
Dr. Art Historian
