For a young artist, receiving an award by the audience of ART-Thessaloniki and the MATAROA Awards jury is highly important as it fuels the carrying on of efforts and the intensive work.
Costas Xanthis
The game of art
Text: Eva Kousiopoulou
The works of this year’s MATAROA Awards winner, Costas Xanthis, are not of the kind the viewer can walk on by without taking a pause to stand before them. As you are about to realize by what he has to say, the viewer does not only stand before them, but engages in a “play” with them, in a blessed interaction that spreads around and generates effects beyond the obvious.
“The installation I chose to present at ART-Thessaloniki, within the framework of the MATAROA Awards exhibition, was composed of an art-book and two interactive constructions-toys. In my view, the element of interaction in a field other than the visual plays a defining role on the level of audience engagement, and in some cases in the reading and comprehension of the work”, he says of his creation.
“The works I have constructed are made of a multitude of different materials, whose processing and combination phase is an entertaining game for me. With that in mind, I wished to give the viewer the chance to play with the work, too” he goes on, while stressing that “the two interactive construction-toys are parts of a larger-scale collection that I had named ‘deceptive phantasmagories’, and lately I have been referring to them by the term ‘toys of hostile nature’.”
“Every construction borrows its key form from parts or entire fighting machines and war vehicles. I make sure that this feature is not at once perceptible, as I choose to dress them up with vivid colors of high or low saturation, which, in tandem with materials as wood surfaces, plastics and plexiglass, end up alluding to toys, fun parks or design objects,” explains Costas Xanthis. “The one of the two construction, over 2.5 meters high, has the shape of a control tower of a modern-day frigate and manages to stand upright having its base stuck between two transparent plexiglass
bubbles. The cone-shaped pinnacle colored in dark pink on top features two transparent spheres, filled with colorful candy that serve as a lure for the viewer, who is given the liberty to try to earn a few by playing,” he mentions of his awarded work.
“The instructions for use of the machine-toy have been pinned up circumferentially as you descend, portrayed in symbols that designate hand movements, handles etc. The instructions illustrate two modes of function. The first rewards the active viewer with nails and pins instead of candy, while trapping the candy inside a big transparent sphere at the rear of the construction, whose interior is inaccessible. The second mode releases the candy, but in an unexpected way. After maneuvering the handles, the viewer-player stands before the construction and ends up shooting with candy his own reflection on a mirror. The whole process proves to be self-destructive for the player,” he comments.
Costas Xanthis manufactures “toys of a twofold nature so as to bring the viewer faced up against contrived eutopias.” His goal is to “foreground the paradox of a superficially eutopian dystopia and the trap it constitutes. I invent appealing sculpture creations, drawing influences from modern and contemporary tendencies in architecture and design, seeking to incite the viewer in an interaction with them.” The starting point of his research was the work by H. Bosch, “especially in the point of distinction of the boundaries between the confronting notions of order/chaos, harmless/dangerous, benign/malign, as recorded in the writings The Land of Unlikeness of R. Falkenburg and Gombrich on the Renaissance of E. Gombrich.”
I manufacture toys of a twofold nature so as to bring the viewer faced up against contrived eutopias. The goal is to foreground the paradox of a superficially eutopian dystopia and the trap it constitutes. I invent appealing sculpture creations, drawing influences from modern and contemporary tendencies in architecture and design, seeking to incite the viewer in an interaction with them.
“Once the viewer gets involved, the games are activated in an unforeseen and surprising way. Through observation, hearing and tactile interaction, one grasps that nothing is what it seems to be and that things will have a different ending than expected. Moreover, the active viewers unintentionally become a part of the work for those who may watch them as they play, trying in vain to win something,” points out the artist.
“My participation at the MATAROA Awards and the 7th ART-Thessaloniki was a great chance to share my visual art research and practice with a wider audience. Even though the tangible interaction between the viewer and the work is not frequent, a significant number of visitors, following my prompting, tried to play and win. While in the end no-one succeeded in satisfying their taste sensory, both the viewer and myself gained something jointly. Modern art is to a great extent conceptual, in other words an art that is not just concerned with aesthetic and harmony criteria, but an art that deals with notions and facts, attempting to comment and record, often in a direct way, political issues and questions that pertain to society as a whole and each and every one of us individually. It is not sufficient for the viewer to merely observe and admire this kind of art. The audience needs to interpret it in more than one level so as to comprehend what the artist communicates,” he notes.
To what extent, though, does the process of interaction contribute to the interpretation of a work? “In my view, in some cases it does, as it transforms the interpretation of the work into an experience. I think that the viewer manages to grasp the work in a different way, more entertaining, while at the same time taking part in an informal performance as the protagonist for an audience formed by other viewers watching. In addition, the dialogue with the audience was greatly beneficial as the recording of reactions and comments is an important food for thought and a compass for the next step in the area of interaction,” he concludes.
“For a young artist, receiving an award by the audience of ART-Thessaloniki and the MATAROA Awards jury is highly important as it fuels the carrying on of efforts and the intensive work. The award is not a purpose in itself, nevertheless the acknowledgement of one’s personal work can offer nothing but joy. Furthermore, the fact that the award was bestowed to a visual art project that demanded a surplus of time, experimentation and interaction for the audience to interpret it came as a pleasant surprise,” he mentions.
“It goes without saying that the recognition of one’s work is a big deal, especially when matched by tools aimed to support the artist. I consider the concept of talent, at least in its traditional sense, to be outdated. I believe that what we used to call talent is nothing more than a keen interest in a certain field, combined with the acquisition of certain skills,” he replies when asked about the artists’ need for recognition.
Costas Xanthis is currently working on expanding the section of “toys of hostile nature” scheduled to be showcased next autumn at the Vita Zita Studio in Thessaloniki. “There are many future plans underway, but my goal, as for every young artist, is to work alongside new institutions and come up with the necessary resources and time so that the creative process is carried on as seamlessly as possible,” he emphasizes.
Bio
Costas Xanthis was born in Thessaloniki. He graduated with honors from the School of Visual & Applied Arts of AUTh’s Faculty of Fine Arts and holds an honors award granted by the Ministry of Education and the State Scholarships Foundation. He also obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology from AUTh’s Faculty of Theology. His work has been exhibited in independent venues, various editions of the Biennale and museums both in Greece and abroad. For his visual art work “toys of hostile nature” he has received the first prize of the MATAROA Awards within the framework of the 7th ART-Thessaloniki held in May 2024.
