Philip Tsiaras: Topologies 1990-2023

Philip Tsiaras: Topologies 1990-2023
CUT TULIIPS (detail)
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Philip Tsiaras: Topologies 1990-2023
22nd May, 2024 to 8th June, 2024
Varvara Roza Galleries
Gallery 8
8 Duke Street
St. James’s
London SW1Y 6BN

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.

Philip Tsiaras: Topologies 1990-2023
Phoenix 193.04×177.8cm mixed-media on canvas, 2004

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.

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.

“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

Philip Tsiaras: Topologies 1990-2023
CUT TULIIPS 152.4×177.8 cm mixed-media on canvas, 1995

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: Topologies 1990-2023 opens on the 22nd of May, 2024 until 8th of June, 2024 Varvara Roza Galleries

©2024 Varvara Roza Galleries, The Blender Gallery