Solo exhibition of watercolours: Osten Museum, Skopje
Tsatsis: Nominated as artist of the year 2024
Pantelis Tsatsis has many talents. As an artist he is self-taught; a person who deeply loves art. Through his own artistic work, he has found his personal, very special approach to the world of art. He has been active as a painter since his youth and in his first exhibitions he is already convincing with his professional expressiveness. As an artist, he didn't have to make a living from art, so he was out of competition and not subject to any constraints. That's why he was able to follow his passion of his own accord and he discovered the big themes of "the origin of the world" and "nature" very early on. With the support of artist friends, he developed his way of painting, trying to sense the nuances of life with keen eyes and uncompromisingly capture them in his paintings. With his pictures it is possible and necessary for him to pursue his own intuition in an unbiased and direct way. With his free but very intense view of the world, he manages to touch the viewer of his works pleasantly and to establish a connection that is unclouded by distracting decoration. His expressive and unexpectedly intimate works convey values that add mystery and a message to the image thanks to his confident choice of colors and the unique light it creates.
There is no other world - we are the world
His watercolors bear witness to the dreams, fears and hopes of the artist, who manages to capture all of this in individual images using the language of lyrical abstraction. In the tradition of Zarathustra's teachings, Tsatsis deals with the basic elements of life: earth, water, fire, air. They form the basis of the eternal repetition of life. The perpetuation of the same is a central idea in Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, according to which all events repeat themselves infinitely often. This eternal return is the great affirmative mystical experience. For Pantelis Tsatsis, this consideration stands for two essential convictions as a person and as an artist: The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, which is why people are forced to deal with states of being, to recognize the laws of nature, but also the beauty in the here and now now to discover, to respect, to enjoy. However, the artist does not explicitly refer to Nietzsche in his idea of eternal recurrence, but rather sees his attitude as confirmed by the world view of the Pythagoreans, especially Heraclitus. From him the knowledge has been handed down: "And it is always one and the same thing that lives in us: living and dead and awake and sleeping and young and old".
Nature as a mirror
Pantelis Tsatsis is obviously a border crosser as an artist. He is not interested in creating a new style, but moves in the regions between painting and conceptual art, which he forces to a self-examination by dubbing and blurring their borders. On the one hand it is about painting as a free design of colour and form, whereby he is inspired by the artists mentioned above and in particular the style of lyrical abstraction. On the other hand, his striving is to convey the importance of nature as the basis of human life. What we encounter in paintings and watercolors by the artist Pantelis Tsatsis are images that seem to convey individual interpretations of landscape spaces to the viewer without actually being realistic. In their stylistic composition, they appear as abstract poems that give rise to this idea. And indeed, Pantelis Tsatsi's painting is motivated by his observations and feelings towards and from nature. Landscape as an earthly and cosmic natural space is his inspiration and the subject for almost all of his work.
Worth a trip: Osten museum, Skopje
The exhibition takes place at the invitation of the Osten Museum in Skopje. The museum gallery is focused on art on paper. It supports new trends and young up-and-coming artists, but also awards the Grand Prix for a lifetime's work to already established and well-known artists. The World Heritage Prize also recognizes those artists in particular who have helped shape the collective cultural heritage. Well-known winners of the Grand Prix for Lifetime Achievement in recent years have included Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, USA; Joseph Kosuth, USA, Tony Cragg.
More about the artist
A monograph of the artist Pantelis Tsatsis. A book about art and ecology, Â accompanying the exhibition:
Tsatsis, The World We Live In. Contribution to art and ecology, eds. Peter Merten and Leonardo Safiriou.
ArtForum Editions 2022, ISBN 978-3-910694-01-9 (gr) | ISBN 978-3-910694-02-6 (en)
The artist is supported by Artforum Culture Foundation and Winter Stiftung Hamburg.
"Nature as a mirror"
Pantelis Tsatsis
Solo exhibition
Osten museum, Skopje Macedonia
June 1 - 18, 2023