PIERRE DIAMANTOPOULO

Information Resource and Official Portfolio for the
Sculptor and Artist Pierre Diamantopoulo.

Pierre Diamantopoulo lives and works in the South East of England.

In 2000, he was elected as Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.

Pierre has staged several solo shows and a large number of mixed shows both in London and throughout the UK, also having exhibited in significant venues in the UK on a number of occasions — from Cork Street to the Royal West of England Academy. He has been represented in the Cass Sculpture Foundation’s New Concept Gallery for Monumental Art since 2001 and his art is in many private, corporate and international collections.

Pierre was showcased in the Twenty First Century British Sculpture Exhibition For Monumental Art at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2002, curated by Tim Marlow and Wilfred Cass and ‘arguably one of the most comprehensive surveys of contemporary British sculpture ever exhibited.’

In 2007, he was awarded Arts Council England Funding and invited to design and install the landmark “Kandi Sky” Sculpture, a monumental work in painted steel, spanning 22 metres, which stands at the Western Entrance of Middlesbrough College, amongst the “Tees Valley Giants” and Northern Gateway Sculptures.

In 20015, Pierre was awarded a commission to place "Flight of the Langoustine" on the new Hove Plinth, Hove Promenade, East Sussex Coast - a four metre high sculpture in bronze and steel.

Scope

Pierre Diamantopoulo’s artistic scope is diverse, his style is resolutely capricious – the product of a restless curiosity. It spans human figuration, geometric abstraction, the symbolic and the allegorical — from the accessible gallery piece, to the truly monumental.

Anyone focused on his figures for a landscape or interior must be swept along by their bounding energy and swayed by a sense of uncertainty and unpredictability. Here, life is in the balance, up in the air or in the hands of a capricious nature or creator

His figures in the landscape are cleanly delineated, carefully composed and look to the present, whilst other works may emerge from the past, and can be executed more freely and exotically.

"I often prefer to sculpt the human form dynamically and classically, though I may equally choose to take anatomy as a point of departure, simplifying this to a resonance of the figure, paring it down to a cut-out or silhouette..."

He brings abstraction and expression together in an unsettling art of movement; where gravity and levity are at odds and where the powerful forces of motion and emotion are at play.

Pierre engages in sculpture that has both a profound sense of harmony and a tense equilibrium.

It is in the articulacy of the figures and the deceptively kinetic composition of the pieces where these sculptures evoke a suspension of disbelief and bemusement; each illusionistic piece being informed by a quirky narrative.

The elegance and a wry humour intrinsic in these works can often be seen in his studio side-by-side with the uneasy, the dark and the bizarre at the other end of his range.

It is in this distinct, absurdist world that another strangely inventive and restive imagination steps out from behind the curtain, though the underlying sense of mutability is still there.

This is where Pierre’s affinity for the theatrical, the carnivalesque the classical form, the artifact, the exotic and the east is liberated, giving his contemporary style a curious, edgy slant.   

Artist’s Statement

"There are two distinct strands to my figurative style. They seem to be intellectually and emotionally worlds apart, but they share the same impetus.

"One strand of my work is a cool and measured response to a profound sense of unrest..."

In this work, every piece has its own narrative, where figures fly in defiance or are challenged by their environments or where they 'trippingly' negotiate upheaval or uncertainties — each one is a balancing act, a metaphor for a precarious state of living or existence.
 
Androgynous and anonymous human figures tilt and fall away - on and off objects that also teeter on a chaotic or shifting stage.

Figures may be set free against strongly convergent lines, shapes and forms — usually composed around the compass, square and angle — the corner stones of architectural practice.

They occupy the air and appear to float or flee in improbable spatial compositions, They hold the air, appearing to float or flee, their means of support seemingly nebulous. It is sculpture that pokes fun at gravity — an exercise in a perfect, but disquieting balance.  

I use illusion to position each form and figure so that the composition of the piece tricks the eye.

Symmetry brings rhythm to the work and I contrast this by referencing the anarchic articulation of modern dance choreography.  

I often prefer to sculpt the human form dynamically and classically, though I may equally choose to take anatomy as a point of departure, simplifying this to a resonance of the figure, paring it down to a cut-out or silhouette or finding energy in a perfectly still figure.

"The other strand of my practice is ambiguous, allegorical and atavistic, but still concerned with mercurial forces..."

Here, I work on impulse — mixing dark foolery, the poetic and the literary with theatre and folklore — blended with a sort of logical nonsense.  

This may be a voyage into the past, personal or absurd, diverted by the raw and primitive, with the wit, the mimic and maverick on board.

These works are often executed with an immediate, freer hand, exploiting the texture of the raw material and are sometimes, intentionally, less polished, sketches in clay. Their painted or patinated surfaces are worked and re-worked, layered and eroded.

My sculptures are almost exclusively one-offs. I am compelled to make original works by a need to discover something else. This is where one piece informs another. I am happy to revisit a theme, but am temperamentally unwilling to be stuck in a mould.

"Studio time also encompasses the study of birds, equine subjects, the articulation of living forms in general and the depiction of groups in motion..."

I do this partly to maintain a better understanding of anatomy and to keep my hand and eye well practised. Here, I develop a library of studies, which I may draw on in my allegorical work – since pure, anatomical representation as an end in itself, is not for me.  

My scope includes stand-alone, fixed and suspended installations – working with, but not limited to, steel, bronze, clay and plaster.

My sculptures are generally one-offs and gallery work often showcases original maquettes for full-scale and monumental sculptures intended for the public realm. To realise the latter, I collaborate with fabricators and foundries.

"Another significant part of my practice is expressed using pencil, pen, oil pastel and oil on canvas and paper."

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