Stephen Antonakos - Light, Stephen Antonakos and the Russian Avant- Garde.
At MOMus, Athens.
There are great roads that can be explored and bear fruit from the study of the relationship between the works of Russian pioneers and the specific and abstract geometry that I use in a variety of media, in my works', wrote Antonakos in 2012.
In the early 1960s neon became Antonakos' primary medium. His art is based on light, scale, proportions, and the relations between geometric forms and their overall relation to their site. It has nothing to do with neon's previous uses, only with its new capabilities as purely abstract linear and spatial colour.
Beyond the obvious affinities with the constructivist geometry, light is another very essential component both in the work of Antonakos and in that of may artists of the Russian avant-garde. Mikhail Laionov, Ivan Kilum, Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Kudriashov and many others gave their works titles inspired by light, like Rayionism, Luminism, Electro-organism and developed a number of theories about the movement of rays and the characteristics of glow and glare stressing out that light is such an important element of painting.
Entrance, 1996, (construction with neon, wood, aluminium)
St Christopher, 1992, (colour on metal, neon)
Kazimir Malevich, Untitled, 1920, (lithograph on paper)
Nadezhda Udatsova, Untitled, 1916-17, (gouache on paper)
Stephen Antonakos
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