Aristotelis Tzakos

Kostas Yfantis, 2020

Aristotle Tzakos or the allegory of color. The fascinating journey, the brilliant tour of the colorful world, culminates in the visual universe of color. But is it just a tour of the world of color? Certainly not because the painter Aristotle Tzakos, in his vehicle of color in the pursuit of pure painting, travels us, worries us and makes us think of the boundaries of artistic imagery, of what may be out there, seen and projected from within the psyche. Also giving aesthetic value to the work and enjoyment to the viewer. For the imaginary or fictional creation ultimately enriches reality and, escaping from its creator and time, becomes a dimension of reality.

The new series of works presented at the exhibition of the Hellenic American Union is a thematic expansion and enrichment of the painter's work so far. There are a number of larger-scale projects that, though recently, converse as an intermediate link to earlier ones and follow approximately the same trichrome modes as a small return and reminder of the past. On the other hand, Aristotle Tzakos' thirty-plus year career is a constant painful attempt at experimenting with periodic thematic alternations. However, in most of his works there is always a point or a meaning and the color dominates with its redemptive liberating potential, leading to inner purification. It also leads to an artistic dynamism that speaks to us, to an explosion of fire that emits every work. The power of the paint, the color imagination, is imposed and dominated by the viewer. The painter has taken the path that leads to the heart of beauty. Sometimes with stripes or tricolor surfaces running through the panels, sometimes with colors that penetrate and diffuse into one another, creating a multitude of geometric shapes that magnify their intensity. Sometimes with color gates openings in space, grids, mazes, roads.

Looking back at the works of Aristotle Tzakos, we participate mentally in a reminder, on an artistic journey through periods of Greek folk and non-tradition, interspersed with elements from various historical international ventures. Elements sealed with the painter's personal style. We participate in this glorious path that comes from the past and reaches the present existential desolation of the time, but also to paths and escape windows that are suddenly opened in front of art, from the existential darkness to a brighter future. A path that serves aesthetics and truth, that is, the heart. And as has been said before, an old Chinese proverb says, "The spirit only makes way more than the heart, but goes less." Through inner conflict, anxiety and pain, the genuine feeling guided by the spirit comes to true creation.

Most of the works in this exhibition, however, are smaller ones and are artistically the next step in the artist's creation, a step further with a central idea or reference point, as already stated, at the center of the painting, initially attracting the eye. . It is usually a square or rectangular structure or shape with an open border sometimes protruding. It is a reference point, a central repetitive pattern, emerging from the unconscious' reservoir of imaginative color combinations. It is surrounded by light possible or soft, harmoniously balanced. The surrounding colors are clear, flexible in light and intensity. Their power is enormous, universal, universal. Sources of paint everywhere flushing and flowing.

A wandering of the primordial unknown and herbaceous, which mutates, changes, is illuminated by their decisive intervention.

Through the conflicting paths that preceded the creation of the works, by undermining the conscious-unconscious areas we reach the end result, where the viewer is led to tranquility, to the quiet harbor, to mental balance, to sincere bliss. It is guided by the purity of the image, the "deep vision", the abstraction and the freedom.

Works open to reading and interpretation.

Today, when the speed of life and its frenetic pace may lead to a superficial vision of things, in a sort of "visual deficiency", the purity of sight and image is imperative more than ever. On the road to this collective necessity, the painter Aristotle Tzakos, with the purity of his works, contributes his own share.

His latest series of works, original in concept and novel as an idea in his hitherto creative course, shows that in painting and art in general, there are no boundaries of thematic, visual, dimensional, etc. Roads, limitless and fascinating representations are constantly being discovered. Roads to prosperity shake the strings of emotion. Provided for the artist's imaginative, creative, ingenious temperament that guides his hand through the range of stimuli of the environment and his psyche and imprints his naked truth.

Only then does the result go beyond the temporal and geographical boundaries, becoming contemporary in every age.

The painter Aristotle Tzakos has all the above conditions for the great transcendence.

Kostas D.Yfantis, December 2019