Artist: Takis
Title: Signal
Year: 1970
Dimension: 138 x 95 x 23 cm
Technique: Painted iron and found objects.
Price: TBC
About the Artist
“Panayiotis Vassilakis, known as TAKIS, was one of the most prominent personalities of both international and Greek art scenes. A pioneer of kinetic art, he unfurled his talent after the end of World War II, and he asserted himself by offering a different approach to kinetic art. Self-taught artist by conviction, he managed to create an inextricable link between art and science by combining elements of nature and physics in his sculpturing. Takis, as a “tireless worker of the magnetic fields …” continues to this date to experiment and create kinetic works of art that have inspired painters, sculptors and poets of his generation, as well as his contemporaries.”
The paragraph was taken from the site www.takisfoundation.org
What does this work say (to me)?
Serious art is not a matter of granting the title of a piece of art to anything just because he or she says so. Everybody has the right to believe their own fantasy but that does not make it real. All of us have the right to be delusional if we want to but that will not make us a genius or an artist.
Behind every good work of art, at least for me, should be the strong desire for unveiling something not seen before, presenting fragments of an idea, of a state of the mind, of how we perceive, see, or/and understand the world around and in us be it physical, emotional, or psychological.
For these reasons I think is important to understand the context of when the artwork was created. Looking at it just from the perspective of our present mutilates its meaning and transcendence.
During the beginning of the second half of the XX century, there was a concern in scientific terms and in art to understand our physical reality, to understand the forces that allow life to exist and to be experienced in the way we humans experience it.
Concepts of space, tridimensionality, magnetism, gravity, light, etc were dissected and explored so to facilitate the understanding of how all of them interact with each other to create the representation of what we perceive as life.
Takis was one of the artists that tried to represent those invisible forces in his work, producing pieces that move between poetry and magic perpetuating that sense of awe that still surprises even after 50 years when many of us are familiar with the elements that sustain life and keep everything together.
In this piece of sculptural qualities gravity, force, tension, and fragility are presented in a disturbing balance so fragile itself that is the testimony of the vulnerability of our physical existence no in terms of our human condition but about how dependant we are that that balance is not broken or altered so life can continue and develop.
Looking at the body of his work one can confirm this constant concern of his, every piece tries to show the sense of it all at a moment in time when that understanding was part of the desire to understand our planet and universe. It is this effort and the subtlety of his work that makes his pieces a work of art then and now.
In what Room to place it?
Being it a sculpture a good amount of “room” needs to be given to the piece, I like to imagine it in a room where it becomes the focal point with enough air around it that the different directions in play can feel comfortable and at ease.
Displaying it
It has the be on a pedestal and ideally in a white background so to allow the power of the lines, their directions and fragility to be enjoyed fully.
