Exosphere

250 x172 cm

Landing zone

250 x172 cm

Yellow nimbus

250 x172 cm

Property of the artist

Curator Toomas Altnurm

Space exploration and space travel are concomitant with capturing images,

as images are the raw data for much space-oriented scientific research.

The many missions led by the European Space Agency and NASA’s

Spitzer, Hubble and soon James Webb Space telescopes have led to the

establishment of a scientific gaze, undisputed in terms of validity.

Although images from space telescopes have helped us determine the age

of the universe, the identity of quasars, and the existence of dark energy,

our gaze and our reach into the infinite is a work-in-progress deemed to

be tackled in the present and not in the future, due to overpopulation and

the fast- evolving resources’ exhaustion of our planet Earth.

These images bring the once imagined space aged closer and closer to

our every day lives. The Future is Now. The Space Age is now and it is

powered by encroachments in space travel and in artificial intelligence

(i.e. singularity, strong AI).

Within this context, the project, The Future is Now, thrives. And from this

context, it derives its importance, as it urges discourse and action in the present.

It has been materialized by the production of high quality photo based

stills and an audiovisual installation in order to draw connections to

narratives around the so-called ‘Space Age’ and current space exploration

and space travel efforts opening a discussion between opposing points of

view on an ideology, which advocates the escape of humanity from Planet

Earth in exchange for new stars and solar systems.

These discourses have fueled my incentive to depict outer space as

both a point of departure and a to-be-reached destination. Also to

contribute my own renderings of the cosmos and communicate new

ways of representing space exploration and space travel. Mixed technique

photo-based processes have been used in the realization of the portfolio

including: direct computational photography, light painting, graphic

interface editing animation video editing and postproduction.

Yiannis Galanopoulos

Yiannis Galanopoulos has been a visual artist for the past sixteen

years. He has participated in numerous solo and group international

art exhibitions in Europe, UAE, the USA and Japan. His work has

been acquired by private and public collections. He has a BFA in

Photography and Audiovisual Arts from the Technological Institute

of Athens, a Master of Arts degree in Humanities from Old Dominion

University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Studies from

Norfolk State University. He holds a lecturer’s position at United

Arab Emirates University and server as the coordinator of the Fine

Arts Minor, while retaining an ongoing exhibition, research and

university service records. He is currently Ph.D. candidate at RMIT

Australia.

SHORT STATEMENT

Art represents for me, a highly creative, never ending mind game,

where novelties are created under flexible rules and flexible

objectives. Success, or failure, within that context of flexibility, is less

important than the process itself. I value the sense of satisfaction

from that process as an end in itself, and its final product, the artwork,

as a generator for such an end. On the whole, I consider artistic

creation, as an applied expression of self-fulfillment and freedom

to play. Although creation is a process in flux, I have identified the

core drives of my bodies of work. These are the “anticipation of a

discovery” and the need for “experimental versioning“.