ART CITIES:N.York-Stephen Antonakos

Stephen Antonakos was a pioneer in introducing neon into the realm of art, giving it new perceptual and formal meanings. Around 1960, when it was becoming clear that neon would be his primary medium, Stephen Antonakos called neon a “controlled paradise”. This phrase indicates both the innate rigor of his vision and his readiness to discover new possibilities. His work is based on light, scale, proportions, and the relations between geometric forms and their overall relation to their site. Antonakos turned away from illusions, allusions, representations, metaphor and symbol: he defined his art as “real things in real spaces, here and now”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Shin Gallery Archive

“Red+”, the exhibition of works by Stephen Antonakos in Shin Gallery is curated specifically for the gallery’s space. In one color and of widely different scale, the selections span the decades from the 1960s to 2007 and include an early model, a Neon Canvas, and four kinds of drawings. The early model for a massive 40-45-foot wide neon installation establishes the artist’s central concern: activating space. The scale of the sculpture is indicated by the Plexiglas walls and ceiling, not merely by the central object. The intensity of neon color that would fill its surrounding space is an essential element. Antonakos grasped that it is impossible to separate light and space, that the glow of neon color reaches outside the tube into the space around it. From this early insight, the activation of space became central to his practice. He explored it in numerous ways with neon, and with his various other media. The precise placement of complete and incomplete geometric forms in relation to their site and to each other was the central, rigorous challenge that he embraced through the decades. He intuited that there was world enough in the exploration of “real things in real spaces”  without words, images, metaphor, symbol, contrived effect, or reference to anything outside the work itself. The newest work in the exhibition is the delicate  2007 Winter Series drawing of colored pencil on vellum with cuts. Its entire surface is covered with Antonakos’ characteristic back-and-forth hatching. Working flat on his drawing table, he then used an x-acto knife to cut out two precise small triangles at its lower left These angled dynamics subtly but definitively insert a sense of movement, and identify the drawing. This series, the related Spring Series, and all the sheets with cuts, tears, pleats, crumples, and/ or collage elements that he made after the mid-1970s are more like objects than images: viewers can relate to them not only visually, but kinetically. This is especially the case with his incomplete geometries, which can be made whole in our imaginations. “Incomplete circle” can be a true description: it is also an oxymoron. Antonakos liked incomplete forms’ extra grip on space. The major 1978 incomplete circle drawing in the show exemplifies this. The placement of red pigment on the paper is so pure, this work can almost be seen as a collage of the two elements. The 1985 proposal drawing for the north face of his Public Work at the 59th Street Marine Transfer Station contributes an sense of even greater scale to the exhibition, and it is an example of the artist’s sure sense of rhythm in space. Not every one of the rectangular windows along the building’s reach across the river is outlined in red neon; those that do have neon pace westward in a strong pattern: 4-6-6-6-4. While this work falls outside the drawings per se, it shows a control and an enlivening of outdoor architectural space. The north wall of the gallery is an ideal site for the 1982 Neon Canvas’s proportions and dynamics. The adjacent glass entrance wall’s transparency offers viewers the chance to see and experience the subtle changes of brightness within and around the work at different hours and weathers. Antonakos’s welcoming of natural light, combined with his refinement of form and placement both are important to the experience and the meaning of the work. Stephen Antonakos (1/11/1926-17/8/2013) came to New York with his family in 1930. He is self-taught and has practiced painting from a young age. In 1947 he enrolls himself in Brooklyn Community College’s art department. From the end of the Forties, apart from painting he also practices collage. From the Fifties, he creates constructions and assemblages from everyday, discarded materials, cloth etc. In the early Sixties he introduces the neon light into his work, a material which will become the most characteristic element of his career from now on. Initially, his neon works are associated with the realm of minimalist art. They develop into strict geometrical forms and sometimes the neon tubes are combined with materials such as wood and metal. Subsequently he begins to design installations on a large scale, for specific architectural spaces, or he uses neon as a means of intervention on architectural spaces and the natural environment. He realizes many commissions for public spaces. In 1973 he constructs the first of his series of Rooms at the San Francisco Museum of Art. In 1980 he begins his series of wall-mounted canvases with neon tubes. He often replaces the painted canvas with square wooden frames, “clothed” in sheets of silver, gold or aluminum, thus creating a particularly mysterious atmosphere due to the ambient light which emanates from them and dematerializes the material status of the work. The works of this period show a deep spirituality and a turn towards the memories of familiar places and faces. From the mid-Eighties especially, he is also influenced by his frequent visits to Greece, his works acquiring references from Byzantine tradition and art. From the beginning of the Nineties he presents a series of chapels which function with the same logic as the Rooms series.

Info: Shin Gallery, 322 Grand St., New York, Duration: 28/2-14/4/19, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 10:30-18:30. www.shin-gallery.com