Varvara Roza Galleries, exclusive representative of Philip Tsiaras, in collaboration with The Blender Gallery, proudly announce a major historic exhibition by the internationally acclaimed artist, Philip Tsiaras, titled “Topologies 1990-2023”.
This exhibition is a historic survey of the paintings by the internationally acclaimed, New York artist, Philip Tsiaras, entitled Topologies 1990-2023. The Topologies of Philip Tsiaras are a complex body of his historic paintings that encompass over 30 years of artistic development. The paintings are a synthesis of the bold figuration and visceral abstraction in a single painting.
During the Gulf War in the early 90s, Tsiaras ,who believes the artist is also a chronicler of his time, began painting airplanes from the thousands of flying sorties seen daily.
“I wanted to balance the media chaos on canvas and challenge my own perception of war.” What evolved was a painterly language filled with layers of information, and mixed with a personal fascination in theoretical math, specifically topology. Loosely put, topology explores continuous deformations of stretching and bending of lines. When connected to art, it intertwines abstract concepts of space, connectivity, and form. They are what Tsiaras calls “my smart paintings”. Philip Tsiaras
The Tsiaras Topologies begin with a detailed geometric substructure, an underpainting of diamonds, squares, intersecting lines, and orbs. Tsiaras appears to purposely obscure the mythological, exalted subject — an airplane, a head, a vase or a horse — with rich levels of abstract painting, while secretly revealing unexpected objects that emerge to ground the viewer in reality — a hammer, a French curve, a gun, a knife, or a bottle of Coca-Cola. Embedded throughout all the Topologies is Tsiaras’ gestural handwriting, an intimate illegibility, that Donald Kuspit calls “mysterious calligraphy, not unlike that of Kufic writing in Medieval art.” Kuspit continues, “In fact, Tsiaras succeeds in giving the objects a specific emotional tone — usually aggressive, but always with a libidinous dimension.”
The Topologies of Tsiaras are a Gesamtkunstwerk spanning more than 3 decades of continuously evolving, evocative paintings.
Philip Tsiaras is an international artist of Greek origin who lives and works in New York City A multi-dimensional artist Tsiaras works in painting, photography, ceramic, glass and bronze and has had more than 90 solo exhibitions. He has been the recipient of many national prises including: The American Academy Award for Poetry, the Thomas Watson Fellowship, two National Endowment Grants for the Arts (NEA), nomination for the Blickle Stiftung Photography Prize, Germany, Gold Medal Award “Civiltà dell’Acqua”, Venice, Art & Letters Award, Greek Foreign Ministry, Lifetime Cultural Achievement Award, the Alexandrion Foundation, New York. His works are widely collected in prominent museums and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 20 Books and catalogs have been attributed to his work.
Philip Tsiaras “Topologies 1990-2023”. will run from 22nd May until 8th June, 2024 at Varvara Roza Galleries, 8 Duke Street, St. James’s, SWY1 6BN, London.
