(click image for more details)Seduction 1, 2006
colour photograph
183cm x 122cm
Anastasia 1, 2006
122cm x 183cm
Petros Chrisostomou's large-scale photographs depict alternate realities, where different interiors have been squatted by his uncanny, outsized sculptures. His work is an exploration of the relationship between object and context, fact and fiction, the real and the unreal, the physical and the non-physical.
The work is firmly rooted in the still life photographic tradition, yet it also gently disrupts suppositions often attached to the genre through what Chrisostomou calls his 'perversion of scale'. For example, chicken eggs that have mutated to the size of a small child have populated the domestic kitchen of 'Wasted Youth (25 Ashbourne Avenue, Whetstone N20 0AL)' (2008) and sleek back-to-back high heels stretch floor to ceiling in the clinical studio space of 'Slut' (2007).
Whether
photographed 'as real' or modelled constructions, Chrisostomou's interiors all hold a personal and/or cultural meaning for him. Likewise, the objects he chooses are selected for their particular ethnic and/or political associations and their placing within such incongruous environments subverts our expectations towards them. The combination of – and the disjunction between – the two foregrounds questions of class, taste, value and identity that seem to rebuff easy resolutions: 'I feel that my work is about extremes and I continue to pursue this'.1
Paul Stone, 2008
1. Statement by the artist
find out more about this artist
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