2006 Participating Artists > Nakis Tastsioglou

|  |  | Nakis Tastsioglou |
NAKIS TASTSIOGLQU was born in 1955 in Athens, graduated in 1979 from the Academy of Florence, Italy. He lives and works in Athens. For this exhibition Nakis Tastsioglou has created large-scale sculptures using four different materials. Plexiglas. iron, water and light. The main material itself (Plexiglas, which the artist has been using since 1980, magnetises the fleeting images of the reflections and incessantly records the journey of light and shade in the surrounding space. His compositions sharp, subtle, serene, austere but also intensely forceful combine the linear austerity of a perfectionist structure with the poetry and sensibility of transparency, which is changeable and evanescent by nature. The works engage in a game of visual transformations, generating allusions to existence and non-existence, matter and immateriality, being and non-being. For years now Nakis Tastsioglou has been practising sculpture in its broader sense, 'carving' light and metal. He arranges luminous bars and metal surfaces in severe, vertical and angular compositions as he anxiously seeks an austere, absolute form where mathematics determines the relations and casts out every descriptive and superfluous element. lt is true that at first the consummate presence of these works, their impeccable appearance as an idiosyncratic expression of the artist himself, holds the viewer at a distance, as with every important acquaintance. After a while, though, the caress of the gaze makes you want to touch with your hand, too. And it is great to see that in some works among the total production of Tastsioglou the curves of nature claim their place from the forbidding straight lines and unfold with particular charm, thus asserting the rights of the natural against the artificial; the rights of the natural entity against the logic of the predetermined layout. There is a lot more that one could write about this rational approach, but I don't think this would be doing justice to the works and their adherence to a model which is observed for years without the slightest deviation: on the contrary, it is meticulously guarded. For when it comes to his art, Nakis Tastsioglou is completely unwavering. Vivi Vassilopoulou |