Miracles

Thanasis Totsikas

19 June - 24 September 2022

Rodeo, Piraeus

It is the end of January and we are walking on his land, undigging piles of material, excavating works and parts of works from the cold soil, compost elements all over the place amidst his significant collection of

tractors, vehicles designed in the 40s and go up to the 90s; “all working”.

Maya Tounta is there taking photos and playing the metallophone. We went together.

It’s a bright sunny day in Nikaia, while everywhere else is hit by a nasty snowstorm.

My second encounter with Thanassis Totsikas is interrupted by fifteen years. The first time was not far from his home, sitting on a table around the corpse of a slaughtered goat, “killed especially for us”.

When one tends toward him, things turn sacrificial.

An existence split between the urban and the bucolic, deep into the psychology of the materiality of life, his work is essentially dealing with domesticity and the transformation of energy, the mood, the spirit into form, edifice, living.

There is something elemental about the person and what he makes. Things can feel cavey or from the distant future.

He loves fire, playing with it, melting and welding metals, thinking of buildings, how to make them, how to repair them, a kind of fixer belonging to the old world.

He crafts the wind, the light and the sound things create when they touch. Philosophical playtime.

Though he is (not) contemporary.

Well established inside the soil were a group of metallic tubes, in degrading pearl Miami car tans, many of them; and rusted.

Then we went back into the concrete house, where his self-made engines await and he made knives for us and blades, to protect us from all dangers; they did.

Fluo shades mixed with rust and marble, clay and wood, decomposing egg shells, orange peels and soil are his index. And fire, and breathe and the light they make; man in nature, man and nature, holding hands. An

index made of metal, sound, fire and spirit.

The bad spirits should be kept away. The sound of fuchsia and the sound of yellow, metal on metal, send them far from the house.

When you meet someone like him and they sound as if the end is nearby, a requiem they say, and a piece of

marble appears with their name on. You wonder.

“It’s not a tombstone, it’s a piece of marble with my name on.”

A teenager in the body of Pan.

Is Pan a teenager?

He sits on his bed inside his shelter made from marble and earth surrounded by a yellow tule, ashes and endless drawings. A ruler of some faraway kingdom, painting flowers every day, monitoring the weather and other phenomena.

Arriving back to Athens, through a tunnel of white, what was left was the sound, the mirror, the fluorescent and the metal. The warmth of the flames our talismans still contained.

His buried flutes have been cleaned.

They stand upwards waiting for you to use them. Each one sings differently, like the shells from the sea, never a same sound.

His leather coat is coated with mud, and his soft tops decorated with knives and sharp blades.

The space between living and not living is very small, the knife reminds us.

Powerful and scared, we are split between our exterior and our indoor lives.

Thanasis Totsikas (b. 1951, Larisa) lives and works in Larisa.

His solo exhibitions include: Miracles, Rodeo, Piraeus (2022); The Crucifixion Of Thanasis Totsikas, Akwa Ibom (2020); Totsikas, Gazon Rouge, Athens (2006); Thanassis Totsikas, Unlimited Contemporary Art, Athens (2000); Totsikas-Ducati, 47th Venice Biennale, Fondazione Levi, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice (1997); Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre, Athens (1991); Transformation 3, Desmos Gallery, Athens (1982).

Group exhibitions include: ανάβασις*, Rodeo, Piraeus (2022); Anti-Structure, DESTE Foundation, Athens (2021); New Acquisitions 2017-2018, National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, Athens (2018); an exercise on values, HAUS N, Athens, Greece (2018); The System of Objects, DESTE Foundation, Athens (2013); Cold Sun / Soleil froid: Hell As Pavilion, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); Ntepti Humanism* (Dirty Humanism), Faggionato Fine Art, London (2011); Destroy Athens, 1st Athens Biennale, Athens (2007); OUTLOOK, International Art Exhibition Athens, Athens (2003); documenta ΙΧ, Kassel (1992); Artificial Nature, DESTE Foundation, Athens (1990); Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (1990); Topos - Tomes, House of Cyprus, DESTE Foundation, Athens (1989); Hyper-Product, Club 22, Athens, Greece (1988); 19a Bienal de São Paulo (1987); National Gallery, Athens (1985); 7 Greek Artists: A New Journey, The Gate of Fammagusta, (organized by The Nicosia Municipality, The DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Demetrios Z. Pierides Collection), Nicosia (1983); Emerging Images, Athenaeum Intercontinental, Athens (1983); Emerging Images, Europalia 82-Hellas, ICC Antwerp (1982); XII Biennale de Paris, Biennale de Paris, Paris (1982).