Photo: Installation photograph from Panos Tsagaris: Let the Sun Protest, Installation photo by Giorgio Benn, courtesy of MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome.
We see, but we do not always perceive, the levels of reality occurring before our eyes. Consider that the nature of the atom is one of constant motion, that matter is not actually solid, that all things are more than what we take them for. How then, might we investigate, what other occurrences are happening and how they influence the mortal plane?
Also: Secret Histories | Rediscovering “The Art of Alchemy”
Greek artist Panos Tsagaris (b. 1979) delves deep below the surface of the sighted world, in search of the cathartic state that art makes possible. Informed by spirituality, mystical tradition, the occult, and alchemy, Tsagaris looks at the contemporary world through a lens that distills another level of meaning. His work is at once beautiful, mysterious, and transformative, much like the nature of dreams themselves. As Italian poet and scholar Arturo Schwarz explains, “The alchemist and the artist share the same ambition: that of doing to understand, and of understanding to transform, both themselves and the world. Alchemy and art aspire to become both a knowledge system and an instrument of transmutation.”
Panos Tsagaris, Untitled, 2016, gold leaf, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, 180 x 130 cm
The artist acts upon the work, and then the work acts upon us. If it successful, we will know it in a way that defies words. The visual realm operates independently, employing a language all its own, using color, line, shape, and form to create an electrical chain reaction inside our nervous system. Synapses fire, nerves tingle as they receive information that we cannot understand in any other way. This is the alchemy of art: it changes us. We are not the same person we were before we encountered the work. Tsagaris understand this, and so he takes and transforms the elements of life and rearranges them in new ways for us to behold. MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome, presents Panos Tsagaris: Let The Sun Protest, a series of large canvases and recent works on paper currently on view through January 28, 2017.
Complementing these pieces are a selection of works from Tsagaris’s Untitled series, created from installations which he assembled in his studio using mirrors of different sizes and shapes. Tsagaris photographs the precursors of his compositions using an iPhone, prints them in black and white, then photographs the same images over and over, adding new mirrors until they lose their capacity to reflect. Once the mirrors have been rendered mute, the photographs are hand silkscreened on canvas, then painted with acrylic paints, including the use of his trademark gold leaf.
Panos Tsagaris, September 7 2015, 2016, gold leaf on archival inkjet print, 150 x 90 cm
Panos Tsagaris, August 30 2016, 2016, gold leaf on archival inkjet prin, 150 x 90 cm
Let The Sun Protest showcases two bodies of work that complement each other beautifully. The Golden Newspaper series, started some years ago by the artist in response to the Greek financial crisis, presents large-scale reproductions of the front pages of international newspapers such as The New York Times that reflect on the troubles facing his nation in recent years. All the text has been covered in gold leaf, a fitting epitaph to the disposable nature of the word and the way in which images form our memories. What remains is the photograph that appears above the fold and the banner of the Old Grey Lady, who asserts she stands for “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” The gold leaf purifies us of the impact of the words, the narratives that are pawned and traded to inform public consciousness, reminding us that if we really want to learn, we must do the research ourselves.
As with the newspapers, Tsagaris has removed he familiar from our grasp, leaving us to look beneath the surface of the world that went from familiar to foreign through his transformation of the elements. What we find here is a pleasure to behold, a wordless source of sensation that speaks of shadows, spirits, and ghosts. It is the very trip we make every night when we close our eyes and let go.
Panos Tsagaris, Untitled, 2016, gold leaf, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, 180x 130 cm
All artwork: Courtesy MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch (Rome – Brussels) & Kalfayan Galleries (Athens – Thessaloniki)
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
