Having a seemingly heterogeneous educational background, in which art, architecture, design, biology and classical singing meet altogether, I orientate myself creatively to a holistic approach to aesthetics within the frame of unity of all art forms. By employing homo universalis as my intellectual model of predilection, I draw knowledge from various fields, inter alia philosophy, law, science, social anthropology, psychology, history, architecture, and research their interconnectivity. Writing is also part of my practice, something I consider both an artistic medium in and of itself, and a procedure for documenting my thoughts and introspective reflections. My artistic interests focus on geometry, composition and abstraction and on how they can reflect ideas and conditions, and create and communicate feelings in a way similar to representational art, and commenting on socio-anthropological, political and environmental issues, and going into deep human existential matters. The major topics I choose to deal with center in on various subjects like urban dystopia, ecology and human geography in the megacities, the future of human kind, brain plasticity and handwriting, and the environmental deterioration, reaching fundamental ontological and existential concerns. The media with which I express all the above vary and can be from a single one in a work to a combination of many. Furthermore, as a classically-trained counter-tenor I often experiment on the boundaries of the human voice, thus expanding my practice to media art.
My central idea and drive is to develop my practice towards a multisensory communication between the work and the ‘receptor’ through all five neurophysiological pathways that connect the subject with the environment outside its constant shell, which is the skin. In this way, until the present my work ranges from a drawing to an installation that combines painting, photography, sculpture, writings, sound, textures and even smells. Photography although, at large, occupies a significant part of my practice; it is not just a practicing medium but it also is the vehicle for the creation of works with the use of other media. This medium allows me to capture the images that ‘pass’ in front of me, as my camera is literally the inorganic extension of my hand. There are many times that I think of myself as a ‘scanerman’. Photographs are like prints of my visual memory and like postcards that I keep from the non-stop scouting and scanning of what surrounds me. In fact, my contact with photography in my life predated the one with the TV; my father was an old school photographer and I was accompanying him many times as an assistant to his work, in and out of the dark room.
The creative procedure that I follow, subconsciously and most of the times, possibly due to my strong scientific background, is being affected by and coordinated with the contemporary idea of ‘art as a research science’ through a methodology that cites the sequence ‘obrerve / document / analyze / experiment / compose’. My main intent in art focuses in the investigation of the boundaries of the media, composing a new syntax and developing an original narrative. By interacting with various materials, I aspire to expand and enrich the interdisciplinary spectrum.
In an era of a continuous technological revolution and while the covid19 pandemic, wars, massive urbanization, extreme climate change and enormous humanitarian issues oppress the human kind, art and science, both act together in a complementary way and can inspire each other. The key tenet in my practice encompasses, from the conception to the completion of a work, a dynamic balance between the sense and the intellect on one side and sensibility and spontaneity on the other.
Tolis Tatolas, BA (Hons), BSc (Hons)
My central idea and drive is to develop my practice towards a multisensory communication between the work and the ‘receptor’ through all five neurophysiological pathways that connect the subject with the environment outside its constant shell, which is the skin. In this way, until the present my work ranges from a drawing to an installation that combines painting, photography, sculpture, writings, sound, textures and even smells. Photography although, at large, occupies a significant part of my practice; it is not just a practicing medium but it also is the vehicle for the creation of works with the use of other media. This medium allows me to capture the images that ‘pass’ in front of me, as my camera is literally the inorganic extension of my hand. There are many times that I think of myself as a ‘scanerman’. Photographs are like prints of my visual memory and like postcards that I keep from the non-stop scouting and scanning of what surrounds me. In fact, my contact with photography in my life predated the one with the TV; my father was an old school photographer and I was accompanying him many times as an assistant to his work, in and out of the dark room.
The creative procedure that I follow, subconsciously and most of the times, possibly due to my strong scientific background, is being affected by and coordinated with the contemporary idea of ‘art as a research science’ through a methodology that cites the sequence ‘obrerve / document / analyze / experiment / compose’. My main intent in art focuses in the investigation of the boundaries of the media, composing a new syntax and developing an original narrative. By interacting with various materials, I aspire to expand and enrich the interdisciplinary spectrum.
In an era of a continuous technological revolution and while the covid19 pandemic, wars, massive urbanization, extreme climate change and enormous humanitarian issues oppress the human kind, art and science, both act together in a complementary way and can inspire each other. The key tenet in my practice encompasses, from the conception to the completion of a work, a dynamic balance between the sense and the intellect on one side and sensibility and spontaneity on the other.
Tolis Tatolas, BA (Hons), BSc (Hons)