For many years I started my work by making specially designed frames which provided the structure on which the other materials were added; like glass, perspex, metal and photographic emulsion or paint on paper. They were painterly pieces with a high-tech edge. In a way some of them were small scaled versions of imaginary large architectural projects.

Eventually I became frustrated with the constant presence of the frame as well as the inability to produce really large pieces because of technical considerations.

Over the past seven years I have been using canvas which I stretch over complicated wooden structures, together with string and specially constructed pieces of perspex. By removing the frame, the pieces started to engage in a more direct way with the space.

The general theme of some of these pieces deals with the idea of break-up, separation, splitting in two pieces, each part going its own way. The separation is characterised by a physical distance between the two panels, which is often illuminated, as if the splitting-up has released a light that influences/colours the wall and the panels themselves. Others give the impression of movement; they fly, move out of the wall

I often use, as a starting point or reference, scientific photographs of flow phenomena: vortices, waves, supersonic flow, turbulence... The wooden structures/stretchers are built in a similar way as when constructing model aeroplanes, which I used to do with my father many years ago. The shapes of some of my pieces have clear references to kites, bullets or aeroplanes.

The pieces are abstract and mostly monochrome, but the paint is not flat. It creates illusions of space and light, reacting with the shapes themselves and the walls around them. The depth and formation of the stretchers are exposed and exaggerated. The aim is to make them appear like objects, large 3-dimensional paintings.

With his back to the wall

Stathis’ art centres on a paradox. The works themselves and the way they are exhibited bring to mind traditional forms of representation, with paintings hung on walls, but in fact they question the very boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture, establishing an altogether different sense of balance.

The paradox lies in the way that the three-dimensional objects he creates give the impression of two-dimensional images. In other words, the three-dimensional objects, which one would expect to find in a place where visitors can easily view them all round, are actually hung on the wall like two-dimensional images, with an emphasis nonetheless on their three-dimensional features. This approach undermines the rigid distinction between sculpture and traditional painting.

This paradoxical placing of three-dimensional objects on the wall, which features in almost all of Stathis’ work, creates a sense of mystery that compels one’s gaze and body to look for the “rear” view and “hidden” dimension of his work. This creates a unique kind of dance as the works “move about” in the space, making the visitors in turn move around with their bodies. Taking part in this dance seems to be a prerequisite for understanding his art.

The way that Stathis creates his art has an Eastern-like precision and a graceful sense of violence. The forces that come into play to materialize the works (by tearing, twisting and shaking them) seem to echo Eastern martial arts, while the techniques and materials he uses bring to mind delicate kites and elegant musical instruments.

Underlying all these characteristics is a fully controlled sense of movement whose energy permeates the space in its entirety.

Andreas Kourkoulas

Architect, Associate proffesor NTUA

Traces of Light

A master of colour, harnessing the plumb, controlling movement and encoding light; Stathis Lagoudakis lays open his musical score, spreading it out on the white walls of an impressive art deco gallery, where the viewer can glance over his visual score, translating sound into movement and light.

Defined by the metronome. Traces of music on paper mark the “absolute rhythm”.¹ Rhythm is clothed in light, lifting the body up high. This dance can be regarded as an elusive sense of time that cannot be enclosed in shapes. The dancer’s every work can happen only once. Movement is defiant, becoming generous at times when it gives material form to its contortions.

Defined by the plumb. The perpendicular walls set the frame, an architectural feature that makes time stand still. The space is dominated by these surroundings, welcoming both material and immaterial acts and actions. Space is a witness of time.

Light blackens. When the primary colours are combined in the air,² the result is white light. Primary colours mixed on a palette give black. Light is the source and transformer of colour, and the very reason for the existence of shadows.

Colour gives light. Colour mixing is called ‘additive’ when there is a combination of light mixtures and ‘subtractive’ when colorants are combined. Additive combinations, which correspond to the natural phenomenon of light, can only be represented through abstraction. Every phenomenon presupposes its distortion, just as every creation presupposes abstraction. Colour is the secret of light.

Movement. Space. Light. The embodiment of movement, the predominance of space and the use of bright light to gratify, nullify or mislead the viewer’s gaze, were some of the basic principles of four art movements in the 1960s (Kinetic Art, Op Art, Light Art and Minimalism) that first appeared in Europe and the United States, transferring philosophical questions into innovative and subversive forms. Since then, these principles functioned as sources of inspiration for artists, as they reproduced and recreated them.

Stathis Lagoudakis derives his inspiration from sources that are not easily discernible. We might look for them in the light only to lose them again in the dark. They are revealed to us on a huge canvas with the intensity of lovers, the muscles of a man and the curves of a woman. The artist places his gates of light in the room like notes to be danced one by one, leaving a musical score of encrypted light on the walls. Each personal discovery made by the viewer drives him towards the gates, which are defined by the split works of the artist. Sharp, absolute fissures give the room a harsh geometrical appearance, indicating to the viewer the escape route and the exits suggested within the work itself. The viewer perceives a kind of sculptural construction that bears no relation to two-dimensional representations.

There is one definite conclusion, and that is that the artist is deliberately misleading us. He creates light where there is no light; he gives the impression of dancing arrows and uneven surfaces, where everything is in fact flat and motionless. He places us in front of monochrome canvases, but the closer we get the more hues and tones we discover. After a while we might think that we have understood his trick: he is creating the optical illusions of Op Art, embodying sources of light as found in Light Art, adding mobile parts as in Kinetic Art, and establishing monochrome “specific objects” 3 as Minimalism did. But we are wrong again! Nothing of the sort is quite happening. We gradually realize that he is using different methods to create a unique synthesis, with a new form of structural association. We find ourselves in front a resolute sense of balance, a work that insists on its materiality, while at the same time leaving us free to reconstruct it in our own imagination.

As an architect of light, he fills his works with hidden sources of light that reflect in the space, creating subtle halos of light in his construction. Shadows are cast, lifting the work from the surface of the wall as if giving it a red frame or as if splitting the canvas with a strong shaft of yellow. This illusory sense of movement and energising of space results in a unique construction that is a cross between painting, sculpture and installation, balancing delicately on geometrically eccentric niches and smooth Plexiglas tubes.

The optical illusions are subtle and refined, and ultimately decided by the viewers themselves. They are revealed only when the viewer takes a dialogical stance towards the work, setting in motion art’s great lie and letting it spill over through the erotic slits in the walls. Lagoudakis’ Shafts and Kites, his Musical Frequencies and Break-Ups are like mouths that speak without being heard, oblique escape routes towards the sky and the earth, that either dance or stand still depending on the decision of the moment. The compositions are charmingly encrypted and are so irrevocably material that they define space and trap time in their forms.

The work of Stathis Lagoudakis is like a choreography that remains to be danced by the viewers themselves, always leading to a new work of art, performed each time for the first time.

Maria Giagiannou

Art Historian

[1] A term coined by Ezra Pound to underline the basic tenet of the British art movement, which he himself named Vorticism, in 1913. Vorticism, closely related to Cubism and Futurism, aimed at harmonizing hues and shapes, in the same way that music harmonizes different sounds.

2 Primary colours emerge from the refraction of light through a prism, according to Newton and as mentioned in Gombrich.

3 “Specific Objects” is the title that the leading Minimalist artist, Donald Judd, gave to his work in 1965.