Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos, Floating Thoth & Two Boat Fish Sea, Ink and Gold Leaf on Panel, 2018

"Floating Thoth and Two Boat Fish" is a fantastical Japanese and Byzantine inspired artwork by Greek artist Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos. It shows a dynamic sea, and beautifully illustrated strong characters. This wooden piece is etched and ink and egg tempera are used. The background is covered in gold leaf. Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos was born in Athens, Greece in 1975. He studied painting and printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he also received a postgraduate degree from the Digital Forms of Art programme. Currently he is an assistant professor at the School of Fine Arts and Art Sciences of the University of Ioannina. Papamichalopoulos is a contributing illustrator for Babel and Mov magazines and works with Eleftherotypia and The Vima newspapers. He is the cover artist of the Athens Review of Books and he also is a freelance illustrator at the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer. His latest published books are The Japanese 3 and Talos. In 2003, he was commissioned by the Benaki Museum for a portrait of the benefactor Andonis Benakis, and in 2004 his work became part of the museum's permanent collections. His work can be found in various public and private collections both in Greece and abroad. He has shown at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (2016), and the Vorres Museum in Greece (2017). from the start of his artistic career, Papamichalopoulos has explored comparative cultural aesthetics, the relationship between occidental and oriental art, the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ as well as the appropriation of non-art by art. His work is chock-full of elements inspired by popular culture, science fiction, B-movies, comics, graphic novels, pornography, Japanese woodcuts and manga, the digital world, video games, photojournalism and street art. "The Great Golden Room", his current series, is an ongoing project that challenges linear narrativity by creating an immense non-linear experience, a discontinuous, erratic and irregular state and space where everything happens everywhere at the same time but still reaches harmony.