From the Exhibition at MUHKA, Antwerp

FROM THE FOREWORD TO THE EXHIBITION'S CATALOG (…) The oeuvre by Varotsos is at the same time structural and playful, intuitive, yet rational. Opposite meet in both the very works themselves as in the interactions and relations which they engage in with their surroundings: open – closed, inside – outside, precariously fragile – solid, transparency – condensation, static – dynamic, emptiness – fullness. The one cannot exist without the other and «here» only begets meaning by «there». The vocabulary of forms that underlies his work is based on universal forms from all times such as the square, the circle and the triangle; yet his human figures –also in the larger, more monumental works – are indubitably inspired by Greek Antiquity, whence their mythological posture. Each and every of his realizations bears witness of his respect for nature, for pre-existent and present forms and structures, but equally for the local inhabitant and the user. For his works do not exist in the absence of the tactile and visual participation by the spectator, Varotsos is an artist of space, the space he enhances sensually and in which he manages to create a tense equilibrium between expectation and surprise. (…) FLORENT BEX

Untitled,1998 Horizon, 1996

Four Labyrinths, 1990-98 Spiral, 1998 Totems, 1991

GRECO-ROMAN WRESTLING (…) In Varotsos‘ work there is a long tradition of sculpture, a sort of passing of the testimony, symbolic of course, from Lysippus to Michelangelo, to anamorphosis. Precisely because in reality the transparency of the materials allows and impresses in the reality that we see a modification of the great sculptor of Ancient Greece from whom it is clear that Varotsos derives the concept of calmness, contemplation and virtual movement. But it is also clear that the idea of iansictasi passes through Michelangelo to reach, through the modern concept of psychological dynamics, Boccioni, thus Futurism. If I were to find references or cultural godfathers for the three works of Varotsos that I consider fundamental: The Poet, The Runner, The Morgia, I would think of De Chico for The Poet, naturally of Boccioni for The Runner and for The Morgia, well the passage to architecture. Varotsos in this respect is a total artist. He has felt the need to relate not so much to an intervention in the landscape - always substantially ephemeral but has given a definitive order to what is the natural disorder of the Landscape. This way he creates a dialogue between form and different volumes, but also brings to nature the specific value of Light. Light means temporality, modification of the landscape, thus it means actually producing an active landscape that is modified with the passing of the hours; capable of registering the passage of the sun from dawn to dusk, but also the waxing and waning of the moon. All at once, then, such a severe peasant Landscape as that of the Apennine of Abruzzo acquires the ability to reflect Light; and aesthetic ability. Interesting is the way in which this sort of monument to light is constructed. There is a modular use of materials which is characteristic of Varotsos’ work and at the same time there is a relationship with a context, which is that of a peasant society, a typically artisan context. But there is also in Varotsos’ work an idea of practice tied to manually and to solidarity: in the moment in which Varotsos is faced with the problem of monumentality there arises that of assistance and the issue of individual work. (…) ACHILLE BONITO OLIVA

COSTAS VAROTSOS: THE CONQUEST OF THE APENNINES A major retrospective exhibition of work by the Greek sculptor Costas Varotsos will be open until the end of April 1998 in the medieval Norman castle of Roccascalegna in the foothills of the Apennines. After Yannis Kounellis, Varotsos is the Greek sculptor best known in Italy – and he is certainly the artist in whom our neighbours have most confidence when it comes to commissioning public sculptures. As the visitor to this exhibition mounts the steps to the Castello –rather as one approaches the Palamidi fortress in Nafplio – he is surprised to find that each cornet contains one of Varotsos’ unusual transparent constructions, while miles away, on a cliff in the Apennines, he can gaze at a huge sculpture in glass, The Morgia. There, Varotsos intervened in a historic place (the rock had been shelled by the Nazis and split in half) in order to restore its original natural form by means of an artistic gesture. (…) MANOS STEFANIDIS IN AMPHIBIAN IMAGES Forms delineated through conjunctions of matter, light and space: those are the sculptural propositions of Costas Varotsos. (…) ATHENA SCHINA THE POET (…) Varotsos, mindful of the minimalist and conceptual experiments, destroys the closed and absolute nature of form, to recover its emotional and semantic strength in a modern direction. (…) LIARIA SCHIAFFINI VAROTSOS: ARTIST OF THE INCORPOREAL (…) When we look at Varotsos’ work, we wonder why it never occurred to us that transparency is being unambiguously conveyed in Labyrinth, that Implosion conveys the disturbance of order, that the theme of Dangerous Dancer is a hazardous balance, that Evolution deals with movement, and that The Poet focuses on stability, the weight of the idea, and the fact that the cosmos is built out of ideas. (…) MATOULA SKALTSA

Labirynth, 1990 Globe, 1994 Horizon, 1990