Nicolas  Vlavianos:   Magic and Machinery                    Jonathan Goodman
New York, 2003

Born in February 1929, Nicolas Vlavianos left Athens in 1956, at the age of 27, to become an artist. He remained in Paris for five years, choosing to apprentice

in sculpture at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière, with the sculptor Ossip Zadkine. In 1961 he had his first solo show, at the Institute Français in Athens, and went along with a delegation of Greek artists traveling to São Paulo, to participate in the sixth biennial there. He decided to stay in São Paulo, marrying and raising a family, while pursuing his career to this day. These are the facts that describe a dedicated sculptor's life; they do not do justice to the complex symbolic work that has characterized his oeuvre, which has consistently confronted both the elements of nature and the industrialized tenets of urban life. An artist of dualities, of subtle civilization and raw power, Vlavianos' metal and stainless steel sculptures celebrate chthonic energies, expressed through a highly sophisticated use of industrial processes.

Vlavianos' fusion of opposites results in statements that may be read either abstractly or figuratively, or as a combination of the two. He has said in an interview, "My problem is how to find a relationship between mechanism and vitalism". Despite the fact that his work often makes use of machined, and machinelike, forms, there is a baroque element that comes early into his art
— in, for example, the welded iron and stainless steel birds, birdmen, and astronauts of the mind - to late 1960s. These forms, with their horizontal wings and arms, pay homage not only to the thrill of flight but also to the industrial techniques — welding and riveting — employed to construct the composition. Despite their obvious signs of industrial processes, these stylized sculptures communicate a magical sense of the human, inspired by a totemic sense of human possibility. Vlavianos' welded and polished stainless steel forms of the 1970s and his machined shapes of the 1980s deliver a triumphant sense of materials; these more abstract works look to machine tooling and repetition of forms to express the raw power, and also elegance, of steel.

The pistons and cylinders that inform Vlavianos' work are treated as compelling shapes in their own right; at the same time, however, they are usually subordinate to the overall gestalt of the sculpture. In the work for his current show, the artist has created a series of metal shields or mandalas. The mandala series consists of a group of bronze and stainless blades riveted to an outer band, the strips of metal moving inward toward the center of the circle, where they terminate freely or are bolted or welded in to place. A triumph of metalworking, the mandalas, in Buddhist tradition meant to be aids in contemplations, also reference the wheel of fate and carry with them the feeling of inevitability. Tower (2003) is composed of a group of tall strips of bronze and stainless steel, bolted to each other and to a circle at the top and bottom of the work. There is also a V-shaped sculpture, again made of bronze and steel, its gently curving, thin strips of steel an abstract representation of a bird in flight. Additionally, Vlavianos' Tower of Babel (2003), a wedgeshaped from that narrows as it rises, is a witty structure also completed with bronze and stainless steel; it recalls the biblical story but also updates if for contemporary consideration. Vlavianos' achievements is to recall ancient forms and renew them through industrial materials and process. He looks both back — to ancient cultures and myths — and ahead — to their future interpretation. The technical skill with which he assembles his sculptures is remarkable for its ability to suggest allegories of modern life; moreover, he never loses sight of the mythic, the way it transforms simple forms and renders them symbols of the visionary. He is insightfully archaic in his appreciation of human possibility; his astronauts are modern-day counterparts of Odysseus an other ancient mariners. An artist of consummate ability, Vlavianos revives old stories and forms and revises them for their use in contemporary life. It is unusual for an artist to use newer materials such as stainless steel in the advance of traditional mythologies, yet he does so with remarkable skill. The artist's experiments reassure us of the ancient role of the sculptor — we remember, on seeing his recent mandalas, the grandeur of Achilles' shield. His work, at once venerable and contemporary, abstract and representational, expands the range of expression in sculpture and tells the old stories — of craft, of mythic personages — anew.


Jonathan Goodman
is a New York-based poet and art writer who has written extensively
on contemporary Greek art for the website Greekworks.com