Costas Varotsos

Athens, 1955

Lives and works in Greece. Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he currently holds the chair of Architecture, in 1987 he represented Greece at the São Paulo Biennial and in 1999 at the Venice Biennial. He participated in the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennial in 1993, at Arte Laguna in 1995 and at the International Biennial of Los Angeles in 1999. In 2004 he received the Honorary Distinction of “Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana” from the President of the Republic. He has shown his works in numerous national and international exhibitions and signed important public works for Greece, Cyprus, Italy, the United States and Switzerland. He took part in documenta 14 at Kassel -Fridericianum (2017).
In 2019 his sculpture “La Totalità” was placed in the garden of the Renzo Piano’s skyscraper in Turin.
By favouring the use of glass and iron, Varotsos’ vibrant sculptures offer a reflection on the constant movement of life. The dialogue between these materials – a visual combination of strength and fragility – is central to his work and creates energetic images of great impact. Whether the artist works on outdoor monumental scales or indoor on his smaller formats, Varotsos embraces glass as the perfect material to interact with the space his artworks occupy. The layering of the different glass strips that fill the iron frames (in the shape of recurring geometries such as the circle or the triangle, or of symbolic images, like the moon), thus offer an interesting viewing experience, with sculptures that constantly change according to the light and, alternating transparencies and opacities, balance and dynamism, become poetic visions.