Page 56 - Collectanea

TASSOS TRIANDAFYLLOU
b. 1962, Thessaloniki. Lives in Athens. Strong Rhythm, 1995
Handwriting No 1, 2020
Through the artistic process, an artist intends to interpret the interactions of his inner and outer world, always using the language of symbols. The interpretations that he brings forth at times are most likely to be reversed over time as the need for new ones always emerges. It is a highly spiritual adventure that fosters man’s great inquiries, thus bringing about meaning through his chaos. As children learn the world around them by playing, so an artist uses the knowledge and experience he has acquired as an adult and keeps on doing the same. I work with my fixations and obsessions that urge me to create images as a result of an internal dialogue with the concept that preoccupies me at that particular time.
My contact with nature and the collection of materials from it and from the urban environment is an important activity in the process of the creation of my artwork. I believe in the power of the autonomy of the materials themselves, so I rarely work on them
by adding color. Part of my job is to imprint surfaces using the technique of frottage, reproducing their image, their roughness and softness, in the most accurate way. Following this process I created a series of imprints from the burial monuments of Greeks from Constantinople (19th century) which were exhibited at the Byzantine & Christian Museum in Athens in 2014, as well as at the Sismanoglio Megaro in Constantinople in 2016.
I am interested in the pictorial use of “repetitive rhythm” in my artworks as well as that
of the concept of the “center” in others, through which the pictorial and sculptural space around it can be perceived. The final image of the artworks based on repetitive rhythm are situations – images that could potentially reside in perpetuity, yet it is the artist himself who will provide the context of the artwork.
Handwriting and Strong Rhythm, the artworks presented in the current exhibition, follow this concept. My job mainly concerns organizing and developing – in the space of two and three dimensions – various materials such as bees wax, charcoal, plaster, wood. At the same time I explore the possibilities of writing as an expressive medium. The adventure of this research begins when I come up with an idea inspired by Oscar Wilde’s first aphorism about art, “The artist is the creator of beautiful things”, which I write incessantly across the surface of a piece of paper. Lines of high density and great intensity are the result, which emerges as the final image due to the repetitive covering of the surface with writing. What is actually depicted is the energy produced by the movement of my hand on the paper while it is writing. I integrate the emerging images in a synthesis of circles, squares and lines. In another version, this action has been filmed. At other times I use different materials such as smaller and larger pieces of slate, organizing them in lines, in a completely archetypal form of writing.
Tassos Triandafyllou
Artist Website: tassostriandafyllou.com 56