Yiannis Melanitis is a conceptual interdisciplinary artist working in the realms of body, performance, digital media and bioart. He study Painting, Sculpture and holds a Masters degree in Digital Arts from Athens School of Fine Arts. He is lecturer professor at the same school and Phd candidate at the School of Architecture in Athens. His art refers to the body in relation to the epistemological (biological) context which defines it. He produced the term bio-performance based on the conception of the "analogical body" (as opposed to digital), in an attempt to re-establish the corporeal status of experience.
Y. Melanitis’s work initiates from a conceptualization on the strategies of contemporary art. Recent research focuses on the role of information on the arts considering “INFORMATION AS THE NEW CONCEPTUALIZATION. (Latest example is his gene micro-injected into the butterfly named Leda Melanitis for the creation of a transgenic, adult butterfly breed). He derives from philosophy, epistemology and history of art critique to construct artworks which embody questions on probability and the "art of new distributions in nature" . Political speech and philosophy arising from machines and computers, render humans to mere 'watchers' or envisage new roles to society. Melanitis attempts to prognosticate that even official, state structures of dialectics that will be produced in the future may derive from self-programming computers. He presents interactive dialectics through the computer, which participate in a philosophical dialogue with the public, remodeling the art of rhetoric through calculation. His other series of artworks reference the mechanics of speech with the concept of the alienation of logic from the human as its inward administrator. Oilpaintings and sculptures recast on linkages between philosophy, language and politics.The oilpaintings, often dysmorphic, refer to linkages between the comical, humorous and political camouflage during the mimetic act.
He has published essays on art and philosophy in english and greek. His texts are translated into english, italian, korean and greek.
His artworks include installations, performances, bioartworks, theoretical texts, critique, poems, code-based web artworks, sculptures, oil paintings and drawings.
Yiannis Melanitis holds degrees in painting, sculpture and digital arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts and is presently a PhD candidate at the School of Architecture, (NTUA) with a thesis entitled: Biological Dynamics in Art.
He has exhibited in Mexico, Brasil, Belgium, UK, Portugal, Switzerland, US, Scotland,Italy,Portugal,Sweden,Germany, Greece. Latest work presentations include MACRO Museum (Rome); at the National Museum of Brasil; Biblioteque of Brasil; Museu D. Diogo de Sousa, Braga, Portugal; the Tongeren Museum and Praetorium, Belgium.
As a subject of criticism, his work is included in international editions as "Art Tomorrow" (Ed.L.Smith), Leonardo MIT, Lomonosov Moscow University, by Seung-Chol Shin, Assimi Kaniari, Mario Savini among others.