Kostas Tzimoulis
Small Gestures, 2025

Tzimoulis’s sculpture is decidedly anti-spectacular, anti-heroic, anti-macho (…). His art is unconcerned with pleasing the viewer’s eye – a unique expression that seeks no recognition: its uniqueness emerges organically, effortlessly, never as an end in itself. At the same time, Tzimoulis as an artist is fascinated by subtle differences – those crucial, delicate distinctions that render a sculptural form, an image, or a gesture poignant and unique. In his hands, discarded material, a forgotten object, morph into radiant energy, ‘a syllable of meaning’ as he puts it, or – to quote Pasolini – into ‘an infinite dictionary, as infinite as the dictionary of possible words.’  (…)
Tzimoulis invites us to view [his artworks] from above, like something happening close to the ground’s surface. Made from a variety of disparate materials (…), his sculptures resemble annotations that examine the relationship between the unrealised and the materialised, the handmade and the mechanically processed, the continuous and the fragmented, the whole and the void. (…) A ‘fundamental question’ can also concern the foundations of economy, the use of resources, and the construction of thoughtful, measured gestures. The artist revisits earlier series, approaches, techniques, modes of thinking. He re-examines materials saved as traces or remnants of earlier (destroyed) works, giving them a new lease of life, transforming them without a trace of sentimentality, nostalgia, or any attempt at monumentality. Rather than the finished work, what matters here is the path followed, the inner journey, the adventurous pursuit of a form or material. The sculptural compositions, or states, the assemblages he creates, all possess a certain rawness, involve a ritualistic assembly, which ultimately liberate the artist. As Tzimoulis notes: ‘These works can be seen as a promise of future realisation, or conversely as a reminder of a past presence. In either case, they exist in space as smaller traces of a greater absence – as the base for a missing central mass. Being aware of this absence, incompleteness, and cancellation can be liberating: an array of choices now opens up to the imagination – an exercise in mental projection.’ (…)

Except from Excerpt from Christoforos Marinos’ introduction to “Kostas Tzimoulis: Matters of Mounting”, exhibition presented by the Municipality of Athens, City of Athens Arts Center, 6 March – 13 April 2025.