Yiniets Vineyards, 2019
Costas Tsolis (Athens, b. 1964) studied at the School of Decorative Applications at the TEI of Athens (1983-1985) and Fine and Applied Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1985-1990). Since 2003 he belongs to the Special Laboratory Teaching Staff of the School of Fine Arts. He was a member of the Occupation Art Group (1986-1990). He has held many solo exhibitions and has participated in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad.
Costas Tsolis, lecturer, Athens School of Fine Arts, has produced a work in which his unmistakable styleis evident. Yiniets Vineyards is a large-scale painting in acrylic paints, dyes and glue on canvas. Tsolis loves different regions, observes their uniqueness, and respects their habits and traditions. For several years now, he has conducted research on erasing the form; his artistic production has evolved in technique, form and content. Tsolis deconstructs the image, erasing the form by long horizontal lines, in a paradoxical process, where he subtracts by adding. In this, he has devised a novel way to undermine the original image.
His themes – sometimes events and sometimes politics, scenes, or landscapes – are drawn from photographs. Through this process of deletion by overlay, he consciously undermines his own painting. The choice of this creative process, involving overlay and stratigraphy, remains prevalent in his work. The constant undermining of the painting, which is already in place as a substrate, yet is no longer visible, or is illegible, and which has undergone a transformation, originates in the philosophical concept of deconstruction, maintaining the main idea, both conceptually and at the technical level. This evolving choice always adds a new dimension to the inner reality of this artist’s work. The concepts of image appropriation and the subsequent erasure and transformation are ongoing themes in his art.
An inspired artist, as always, he creates a palimpsest of abstraction; yet, this is abstraction arrived at by adding to the image. A distinctive, intimate work of art, reflecting the artist’s perseverance and struggle for continuity, but also the quest for evolution and renewal.
The work was created especially for the group anniversary exhibition “Lands of Creation, A tribute to Metsovo” which was inaugurated at the E. Averoff Museum in 2019.