Vasilios Roumeliotis was born in 1977, in Thessaloniki, Hellas.
He is the founder of the brand Roumelight which specializes in luminism and light art creations.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Technical Civil Engineering and a master’s degree in Geo-Information Science from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He has also received pedagogical training from A.S.P.E.T.E. and has undertook Telecommunications Engineering courses in Padova, Italy.
He has started experimenting with lighting since he was a supervising engineer in industrial constructions. During the last decade, he has elaborated his practice conceptually and associated it with the label Roumelight, a brand name inspired by the artist’s last name and the word ‘light’.
Under the brand name Roumelight he has held solo exhibitions and has participated in group shows organized in established museums and art spaces in Hellas and abroad, such as: the Benaki Museum in Athens, Hellas, the New York Design Center in New York, U.S.A, the Innovative Cultural Center (ICC) in Kaluga, Russia, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Hellas.
Today, Roumelight is constantly developing into an exceptional and successful brand within the highly demanding light art market.
Roumelight’s statement: ‘Roumelight offers innovative, atmospheric lighting drawing on architectural minimalism, industrial design, and ancient symbols, among other influences. Made by hand from wood, metal, and glass with energy-efficient bulbs, each site-specific installation is conceived around a theme and tailored to the collector’s preferences. These conceptual works exist in the gray area between functional lighting and the higher plane we call art.’
Curator’s note: Throughout human history, light has extendedly been used for artistic or architectural purposes and effect. However, near the end of 19th century did the luminism and light art appeared, after the discovery of electric lighting. Further, it was not until the late 20th century that became a dedicated form of art and its development was epitomized by the advent of Modernism, along with the experimentation and innovations of modern artists of both Constructivist and Bauhaus movements.
In the sphere of this visual art form, an ever augmenting roster of modern and contemporary artists contributed to the redefinition of luminism as an important and exclusive art genre by showing special skill in dealing with light, plus special concern in the capacious ways light could be conceptually integrated in their practices.
Among the up-and-coming artists who are engaged with the process of exploring luminism, Vasilios Roumeliotis introduces himself in the contemporary art scene through his hand-made playful lighting installations, using light as the main medium of expression, and devoting all his creative experimentation to light art.
His art draws upon the conceptual transubstation of versatile objects into new functional entities and organic autonomies of light source. Everyday objects, bicycle wheels for instance, are transformed inventively into sculptures and art pieces that produce light in an innovative and creative way.
Furthermore, Vasilios Roumeliotis is building his own characteristic, sharply contrasted, artistic language with regards to taking emblematic objects, symbols, personas, figures, archaeological artifacts, styles, and, in general, different kind of particularities, that were rendered as point of reference in different time periods, and re-fitting them into a contemporary light art installation, outside of their original context. From Ancient Hellenic ships, arks and symbols down to ordinary and daily objects, from the famous unique Minoan artefact ➞ The Phaistos Disc, to the timeless female art icon ➞ Mona Lisa, these are only few of his subjects that synthesize his pluralistic artistic vocabulary, interpreted throughout the whole body of his light-oeuvre in a subversive and contemporary manner.
His strength rests in the ability to fashion different materials like wood, metal or glass as structural components of his lighting sculptures, employing light onto them with such an unparalleled inspiration and exceptional imaginativeness. His technique come to also incorporate an unparalleled morphological plasticity of the overall sculptural form, releasing the art of lighting from its mere functional basis.
And it is the technical precision, as designated by his architectural background, his deep knowledge of 3D digital design, and his professional training as a civil engineer, combined with his profound appreciation for originality and creativity in design, that open the way for his light creations, by the brand name Roumelight, to reach a high point in artistic significance and importance.