COSTAS VAROTSOS IN ITALY
Implementing Utopia
Costas Varotsos is one of the most important Greek artists of the generation of the Eighties, and he has great experience in the creation of works --usually of monumental proportions-- for open-air and other public spaces. He has to his credit group and personal exhibitions in Italy, where he studied architecture and painting. Two more parts of that country, Abruzzi and Molisse, recently acquired two large open-air works: Morgia Horizon and Casacalenda Poet, respectively.
In an era in which the contemporary artist's scope is dertermined and constrained (to put it bluntly,stifled)
by the lack of economic support and by the conventions of the art system, works which succeed in taking shape despite whatever adversities and in becoming a creative part not only of the physical environment but also of their social setting, gain tremendous significance. Artistic decentralisation and nomadism combine to afford fresh scope and new fields for action, sometimes succeeding in restoring the damaged communication and diaLogue between the artist and the world. New channels and new loci have thus begun to appear on the map of contemporary art, and even artistically neglected areas have begun to acquire new fields of expression. Artists who are willing to acceptthat challenge have managed to create works in a way which would have been unthinkable in tlνe more familiar and conventionalspaces, while at the same time discovering new codes for communication with ordinary people.
Costas Varotsos accepted such a challenge, and thanks to the collective work and financial assistance provided by the decision taken on the part of more than thirty communities in the Abruzzi area to turn towards contemporary art, he has deposited on the La Morgia rock not just a work, but a vision.
One of the most important elements in the creation of this work was the decision taken by such a large number of local government authorities in an area of farmers and shepherds which further off the beaten track than almost anywhere else in Italy to take an active part in contemporary artistic life and production. An initiative group made contact with well known artists from various parts of the world, including Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Anne and Patrick Poirier, Varotsos and Tamata Gircik, inviting them to integrate works into the natural environment of the Apennines, a place made wild by its geographical and climatic conditions. The artists would thus be contributing actively to the creation of a new order of things and inaugurating a pioneering project under the title of Arte-Natura. The objective of Arte-Natura is to create a work in the form of an intervention in the general geographical area accompanied by a personal exhibition of work by each of the participating artists.
The project was inspired by Antonio de Laurentis, a local artist, who is also among the participants. Horizon --like the nearby Casacalenda Poet (belonging to a different area and a different project)-- reminds us of the artist's desire to refer in his works to the disturbed yet confirmed balance between space and time and to convey, with the decisive assistance of the materials he chooses, to the dynamics, the intensity and the energy which typify the modern era. The work is also a huge --almost epic-- plan, a ground-breaking incident and a piece of Utopian action in reference to the prevailing system which determines the value of the work of art.
In morphological terms, the work consists of a regular and rhythmic accumulation, in layers, of glass laid between the two peaks of a granite rock; the empty space between the peaks was the result of a land slide caused many years ago by human error. In this work, whose structure succeeds in being morphologically and aesthetically integrated while at the same time constituting one of the most successful examples of disobedience to any predetermined form, Varotsos manages through transparency to preserve the image of the rock as it was during its two previous stages (before and after the accident), side-by-side with a third image, that of the rock as it is now. This, then, is a complete and mature work, one in which there is no desire to improve on reality.
It strikes the viewer as resembling a strange blue lake, an inexplicable reserve of water which by some peculiar and almost metaphysical method has got itself into such a prominent position that we can see it in its entirety, from the surface down to the bed. The site in which the work is located is something of a trademark for the area as a whole, and over the passage of time has of course become charged with stories and superstitions. For the moment, its current changed form does not seem to have affected its significance, as an emblem; in fact, it has strengthened that significance, even though at first there was quite a lot of opposition to the project. In the months to come, the sculpture will be accompanied by a personal exhibition of the artist's work, to be arranged by the Arte-Natura team in a local castle converted into a museum. This will give the public of the area a chance to get to know Varotsos' work better, an important point in view of the extent to which the artist's work has intervened in their locality. Morgia Horizon, the largest work ever created by Costas Varotsos, intervenes dynamically but respectfully in the environment and also in the everyday and socio-economic aspects of life in the area, stimulating dialogue and counter-dialogue, educating, provoking, changing beliefs, attracting visitors and the interest of experts and the media, and contributing to the formulation of a historic and visual landscape. Yet apart from serving as the artist's great stake in his personal confrontation with nature --his permanent opponent, but also his leading model and teacher-- this work is also a significant moment in the history of large-scale public, open-air works, integrated into, yet differentiated from, the natural space, determining it and determining by it.
© ART TOPOS, 1996, 1999
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