Works that deal with the tensions between mind and body, Self and Other, present and past.
Antonis Balakas (Tony Balak)
Art teaches in an active way
Text: Dimitra Kehagia
The first spark for painting was ignited in his teenage years, while attending a workshop in his hometown Florina. Around that time he won the third award at a painting contest, a distinction that fueled him to passionately walk down the road of art and painting. By the age of 17, he was already adamant about his decision to get involved with visual arts. He enrolled at AUTh’s Faculty of Fine Arts, graduating in 2004 from the painting workshop of Makis Theofylaktopoulos.
In 2006 he hosted his debut solo exhibition at the Florina Museum of Contemporary Art, housed at the time in a wonderful neoclassical building by the city’s river. Despite being a debutant artist, within the fifteen-day exhibition he broke the record attendance in the museum’s history. “In a city such as Florina, considered as a cradle of arts, an artist in his early steps sees himself as the next link of a chain, as the carrier of a long tradition. I felt right from the beginning as a piece in Florina’s rich mosaic of artists.”
Human body took center stage in his early works, whereas his key influences came from the painting of Giorgos Bouzianis, Vincent van Gogh and Francis Bacon. He feels particularly lucky to have crossed paths with renowned mentors in his career, such as Nikos Doumas. “He provided me with all the necessary tools for what I do,” he mentions. He has teamed up with the University of Western Macedonia in the Faculty of Fine Arts’ painting and engraving workshops. That’s where he carries on his studies to obtain his second bachelor’s degree majoring in Sculpture. He has seven individual exhibitions under his belt, having also taken part in many collective exhibitions both in Greece and abroad, with Florence’s Biennale held in October 2023 standing out as his best moment.
His works touch upon the tensions between the mind and the body, of the Self and the Other, of the present and the past, whereas his approach reflects his reactions on social issues, such as war, immigration and consumerism, juxtaposing images from TV, the Internet and magazines. Antonis Balakas makes an analogy between the creative process and skiing, as he experiences the same explosion of adrenaline as in the ski slope. A walk in nature, an idea, or even a fleeting glance at a painting can serve as a trigger.
Art is no job, it’s a love for life. Art is a universal idiom that transcends all language and culture barriers. It allows us to convey feelings, ideas and experiences that may be hard to put into words. Creating art and taking delight from it stimulates our imagination, critical thinking and resourcefulness. It helps us to see the world from different angles and develop our skills.
He mostly draws inspiration from the people around him, and gets more creative when feeling down, as he locks in himself, living in the realm of his imagination, while expressing his gratitude for the gift and the blessing of being engaged with art. “Art is no job, it’s a love for life. Art is a universal idiom that transcends all language and culture barriers. It allows us to convey feelings, ideas and experiences that may be hard to put into words. Creating art and taking delight from it stimulates our imagination, critical thinking and resourcefulness. It helps us to see the world from different angles and develop our skills.”
He also feels grateful for being given the chance to experience the unique feeling and sharing and passing on his knowledge to the next generations, through teaching little children. “The satisfaction, the joy and the love you receive from children is pure and genuine, motivating you to carry on. After all, as Picasso once said: ‘The meaning of life is to discover your talent. The purpose of life is to offer it to other people.’ That’s my definition of success both as a person and as an artist.”
Working in primary education he points out that art has the power to create more pleasant and attractive public spaces, to teach disciplines such as history, science, maths in a more entertaining and active way. “People are in need of art. Look around you, art is omnipresent. In the clothes we wear, the colors, the designs, the supermarket ads, the video games. Many features of our everyday lives are made of art, but most of the time we pass them by as we are constantly on the run to make a living.”
He labels his life as “interesting, sufficiently emotional, many times erotic, and sometimes self-centered,” while making it clear that he dislikes talking about the prices of artworks. “I remember a course at the Faculty of Fine Arts under the title ‘Aesthetics in Art’. We were given the example of a common plastic bottle of water. In the supermarket it costs thirty cents, in the airport it’s sold for three euros, and abroad you may end up paying it for five euros. The same goes in Greece with art. The same work of art may be valued for 200 euros in Greece, and five times more elsewhere, depending on the financial status of each country. As many consider painting a profession, they place a price tag on each work in accordance with how many hours one has spent working on it. Nobody bothers to think of the many years of hard work and devotion for someone to reach the level of creating works of art and not just pieces of decorative painting to light up a wall.”
The latest exhibition of Antonis Balakas will come in digital form. It’s a project he has been working on over the last few years, scheduled to be presented online in the first months of 2025. “Viewers will be able to visit the exhibition through their computer, mobile phone or even a pair of 3dVR glasses. They will be given the possibility to roam around as part of a realistic visualization,” he explains, adding that his goal within the next two years is to host an individual exhibition at the Museo del Novecento in Florence.
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