RIVIERA

Dr. Sozita Goudouna

Antonis Tsakiris’ coastline, his own “riviera”, is a journey into the world of memory, instinct and imagination, through his unique way of painting.

The artist, through an experiential origin and inner search, creates a series of works that capture the movement between existential, personal and collective. This multidimensional and deeply personal exhibition dialogues with history of art and its own aesthetic power.

Through about thirty works, Tsakiris seeks the counter-argument to the reality that surrounds us, attempting a form of visual dialogue between historical heritage and contemporary cultural identity.

A main pillar of the exhibition is a persistent thought that was initiated from a memory fragment: an evening walk in Athens Riviera, under the summer full moon.

According to the artist himself, subconscious, acting synthetically, projected this particular image inextricably and arbitrarily connected to another, that of a dismantled car on the coastal road, by the night, seaside city.

Through a bright and simple painting language, the painter depicts not only the car accident itself, but, above all, the wider atmosphere, the human faces and the environments that accompany it.

The paintings, with geometric rigor and vivid color, reveals a structured but also playful connection with space and perspective, intensifying the sense of relief, questioning and imagination, in a multilayered narrative that mixes reality and memory, myth and psychology.

The exhibition consists a synthesis of works, oil paintings and inks, taking the viewer on a journey to an imaginary city, where butterfly drivers, the lovers, the shattered, workers and passers-by, everyday citizens, represent the psychic and social dimensions of modern human condition.

The painter creates an enigma, a narrative of life that reveals how the past and the subconscious can become the fuel for pictorial expression.

Tsakiris' inspiration, as he points out, stems from an eternal alternation of experiences and the subconscious, approaching painting as a means of strengthening this dialogue.

In his works, the influence of surrealist and expressionist movements can be traced, as fluidity, disruption and the profound human condition are walking the line between reality and psychological interiority.

The exhibition section presented converses with history of art and current collective consciousness. His works penetrate the human soul.

They balance between the random and the instinctive. Through his visionary depiction, he attempts to convey the aesthetic power of poetry and the concept of poetic existence, as a valve of resistance to the dark and fast pace of the times.

His familiar, human figures, express the socio-political and psychic dimensions of modern world, while the sea – always there – and the coastline, resemble transitional landscapes, symbols for change, experienced moments and identity.

In his new series, the artist forms a new external, human field, where the sea and the coastline are transformed into a symbolic "riviera", a transitional setting, a truth that emerges and disappears, while at the same time uniting with human history and collective unconscious.

Tsakiris continues to experiment and deepen, looking for the essence in every composition of color and form.

He carries on the tradition of modernists and avant-gardes, but at the same time forms a mark that is unique in the Greek art scene. Antonis Tsakiris’ paintings, function as small myths, a reflection of our fears and desires.

The works express the psychic and social dimensions of modern man as he explores his true position and attitude in the present, in the now.

He views art as a timeless vehicle of communication and collective reaction, and through it, he attempts to comprehend and express his deepest ego.

In his works, boldness is related to prudence, the past with the present, everyday life with the imaginary. And the truth with the memory of a night walk around Athens Riviera.