Member

Arfaras Michael

He was born in 1954 in Athens. He began his studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts with Yiannis Moralis (1972-1974) and continued at the Staatlische Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Braunschweig, Germany) where he studied printmaking, graphic arts and film animation (1975-1980). After two solo exhibitions in Germany (1978, 1979), he organized his solo exhibition in Greece (Zigos gallery, 1980).
In 1987, he started shooting experimental films in his studio in Hannover. His cinematic projects interact with his visual art creations, in which various printmaking techniques coexist with painting, drawing, collage, video, and other mixed media.
Over the ‘90's, he presented assemblage constructions of miscellaneous objects and materials collected from the garbage, which resembled anthropomorphic idols of an unknown religion. Complicated allusions to old cultures or traditional arts, along with critical comments on issues of modern times can be detected in his entire work. The complexity of the technical devices and the multilevel intellectual processing of the themes, are combined with an almost primitive expressive immediacy.
He worked for many years (1988-2006) as a specialized courses professor (Grafiks) at the Institute of Fine Arts and Art Sciences (Institut für Bildende Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft) of the University of Hildesheim. Since 2006, he has been appointed head professor of the 2nd Printmaking Workshop at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
He is also involved in art books illustration and editing. His book Printmaking and printed art was published in 2009 by Metaixmio editions, an extensive manual that had been absent until then from art bibliography in Greece.
He often exhibits his work in Greece and abroad, through solo and group exhibitions. He also participates in experimental film festivals and international printmaking biennials. He has been awarded several times for both his films and his visual art creations, e.g. printmaking award of Lower Saxony (1980), AICA award and 1st prize at the Baden-Baden European Biennial of Printmaking (1988), etc.


Source: iset