FILE:02
THE VANGUARD
The Living Architects of the Invisible.
CURRENT ERA
The visionary impulse did not end with the Symbolists. In the modern era, it has broken the frame, expanding beyond painting into sculpture, performance, and total theatre.
These are the contemporary masters who are currently engineering the bridge between the subconscious and the material world.
KEN CURRIE
b. 1960 / SCOTLAND
A key figure among the "New Glasgow Boys," Ken Currie creates unsettling and powerful works that explore the human condition, mortality, and the horrors of the contemporary world.
His haunting, luminous paintings of the human form are unflinching meditations on physical and moral corruption, stripping away the facade to reveal the raw spirit beneath.
ELMAR TRENKWALDER
b. 1959 / AUSTRIA
Trenkwalder is renowned for colossal ceramic sculptures that evoke a fantastical, baroque world. His work blends biomorphic, architectural, and erotic forms into towering, dreamlike structures.
These monuments seem to emerge directly from the subconscious, providing "insights into the sublime spaces of the human soul."
ROMEO CASTELLUCCI
b. 1960 / ITALY
An Italian theatre auteur, Castellucci’s work is rooted in a vision of theatre as a holistic, plastic art form.
His productions are not driven by literature but by visually charged, highly imaginative images. He challenges the spectator's unconscious, bypassing the intellect to explore the deepest, often darkest reaches of the human experience.
DIMITRIS PAPAIOANNOU
b. 1964 / GREECE
Papaioannou creates surreal, dreamlike worlds that blend physical theatre, experimental dance, and visual art.
He forges a personal, contemporary mythology through "choreographic installations" and living tableaus. His work is a meditation on the fragility of existence, exploring themes of memory, eroticism, and the beauty of the absurd.
Augustin Lesage (1876-1954)
A French coal miner with no artistic training, Augustin Lesage's life changed at age 35 when a voice spoke to him from the darkness of the mine, declaring, "One day you will be a painter". Believing he was guided by spirits, including his deceased sister, Lesage began creating vast, intricate, and perfectly symmetrical canvases. He claimed to have no overview of the work, surrendering his hands to the "impulse" of his guides. His dense, architectonic patterns, reminiscent of Egyptian or Oriental designs, are a pure expression of Art Brut, or "outsider art"—art born from an authentic, unmediated creative impulse.