library | Apostolos Koustas

LIGHT FROM DARKNESS

Sofia Ioannou — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:23:00 GMT

When I first saw the works of Apostolos Koustas, I surrendered to their immediacy, well concealed in their simple lines, their incisions and shapes.

Later, more calmly, I summoned up the thoughts of Nobel Laureate George Seferis from his three secret poems and whispered them in my own words. Our works are the children of many.

Umberto Eco embraced this collective memory when he said that those who think we live for only a few years are mistaken: “Our life is measured in millennia”.

Indeed. Koustas, possibly unwittingly, asserts this firmly in his works. In his lines, the history and prehistory of ancient Greek art travels on land and sea, its own symbols and ‘codes’ open to an age-old dialogue and new versions.

His skill reins in the sharpness of the Greek light and transfers it, ‘engraved’, to the painted surface – his own record that illuminates symbols and references obliquely, yet simply, for “the myth of truth was born simple”.

On the other hand, still from the same source, Greece emerges as a supreme reference point: Greece as a cultural area. A land that is home to the Muses and the arts, to poetry in the broadest sense, and the ample embrace of the Aegean, a superb composition of natural and cultural features.

Apostolos Koustas boldly creates his own compositions. Traces of the ships incised on Cycladic frying-pan vessels, memories of the Aegean, shapes from the Geometric period and Classical times, are all devoutly registered in his works.

The challenging ‘script’ of the Phaistos disk, the spirit of Delphi, the Sirens, the Argo and the Centaur, can all be detected or named in his paintings, so that these serve as a modern synopsis of the age-old history of art. At the point where the daily prayers of men become petrified, the artist imprints his own prayer, fills the silence of centuries with ‘words’, and plays his part in the unbroken continuity of art.

Archaeologist – Art Critic

THE MAGNIFICENCE OF ENGRAVING

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:52:00 GMT

Apostolos Koustas broadens the horizons of technique and theme
in the art of engraving

A technique of innovation and skill

Apostolos Koustas’s engraving uses as a base neither wood, nor stone, nor metal, but
cement slabs. The artist, a true craftsman, uses his own hands to carry out each stage of the
procedure of engraving without the intervention or help of other artisans or machines.
The material, in combination with the appropriate selection of paper and dyes, opens up a
wide range of expressive means which remain, however, inextricably intertwined with Apostolos
Koustas’s inspiration: a new sense of proportion, which at times touches upon the monumental;
an austere and priestly line; a density and warmth of texture and colour.

Poetry of fear and joy

Apostolos Koustas’s themes are of a dual and dramatic nature
His oeuvre is steeped in a sense of trial and deterioration, often expressing fear, pity, the
agony of disintegration or petrification with amazing vividness, both in the face of man and of
nature. Here both the animate and inanimate – the bird, the forest, the boat – seem doomed to
slip into the slumber of decay or charring. It is the slow metallization of life.
His works also breathes with an epic brightness, a primeval vitality, everything ready to
bubble forth once again due to the dynamic economy of the drawing, the force of the work,
which is sometimes imposingly calm, like in the simple landscape of Messolonghi or in the
Trojan Horse, full of the embarrassed innocence of a child’s toy in spite of – or because of – the
threat of the spears pointed at it.

The ethic of cyclical time

Apostolos Koustas’s works have a mythical dimension. The artist revives, with no intention
of being anecdotal, some of the great figures or moments of Greek mythology. In addition, even
his themes inspired by nature or the Byzantine tradition take on a mythological air.
This tendency becomes even more pronounced when the austere, and oftentimes archaic,
drawing bears a firm resemblance to prehistoric frescoes and Neolithic signs and symbols.

Apostolos Koustas’s oeuvre seems to commune with primordial sources, ever vivid, enhanced
by his restless presence. A seeming lack of timeliness veils, in essence, a more profound
timelessness. And the flow of time – its permanence – is depicted with grooves, positioned in
such a way that they too take on a cosmic dimension.

However, Apostolos Koustas’s basic structural element is his use of etching. The engraved
line is an etch but also emerges as the continuation of multiple etches. These etches are
simultaneously the marks of a entombed past, the expression of the demanding presence of
memory and the consecutive points of reference on which one’s art and fate are built and brought
out.

Thus, Apostolos Koustas’s materials, themes and drawings all come together from the intensity
of two seemingly opposite poles: stone/paper, roughness/smoothness, hardness/softness,
decay/vitality, austerity/fluidity, the archaic/the modern, loneliness/communion. The joining of
these imposing elements is brought about by Apostolos Koustas’s skill and sincerity, leaving a
trace of the magical and vital upon us.

ARCHETYPAL ECHOES OF A VISUAL IDIOM

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:48:00 GMT

Apostolos Koustas’s work has been critically reviewed while the quality of his
idiom and his stirring aesthetic range have been determined and analyzed.

In the fifteen years of his presence on the engraving scene, he has managed to
go beyond the borders of Greece, exhibiting his work in various countries while his
crowning achievement is an award from the 1991 Osaka Triennale, in which 1748
artists from 67 countries participated.

I have written about Koustas’s work on a number of occasions, but what
makes his work particularly special to me is that I was the first to support his talent.
He studied the visual arts at the side of Yiorgos Sikeliotis, Tassos and mainly Vasso
Katraki. He had the good fortune to work in the latter’s studio and was consequently
creatively influenced in the first stage of his development in the art of engraving. His
direct contact with Katraki’s studio taught him much. But Koustas also helped himself
by charismatically absorbing the inner workings of art. Whatever his eyes saw his
shaping hands executed. Thus, with inspiration he channeled his talent into the art of
engraving. He doesn’t lug stones from Cretan quarries like Katraki, but makes stone
based on a patent of his own. Yet he achieves the effect of original stone in
appearance and texture.

At Katraki's side Koustas was able to observe her daring when she took
engraving a radical step further by using stone as a base instead of wood. The shift
from wood to stone allowed for a new material and aesthetic in terms of expression
and idiom, but even more importantly it liberated engraving from the confines of size,
freeing it from its dependence on printing and advertising. It allowed engraving to
become an art form in its own right, establishing it as an equal of original oil painting.
With the absence of limitations in size (a century-old thorn in the side of
central European countries), engraving once and for all threw off the restrictive label
of ‘applied decorative arts’. The plural form of the word ‘arts’ refers to the four-fold
dimension of engraving: besides engraving itself, it also includes etching, lithography
and silkscreen.

Now that engraving was considered an art, and not painting’s ‘side-kick’, it
also became clear that when a painter tries his/her hand at engraving, the attempt is
often inadequate and vice versa.

In the 21st century electronic age, engraving has greatly departed from the
positions and materials used in traditional engraving, which had remained unchanged
for centuries. Even the production process of the printed work has been surpassed,
making use of the potential of electronic technology.

Katraki was the first to push the limits by employing stone instead of wood in
engraving, but the 21st century electronic age pushed them even further as an
expression of post-industrial electronic society. It is a new field for artistic expression,
turning the world of art topsy-turvy.

Koustas has set his own challenge: to co-exist with the new social givens in
art. For who is not moved by electronic technology’s achievements, able to produce
images without the necessary mediation of an actual object? The art of engraving
lives and functions intuitively in terms of how it can overcome the fear of the twodimensional
surface, its limited and yet wide field of action. From the image (the
surface) it struggles to transcend to the poetic vastness of time and space. This need
also determines the intensity of emotion, aesthetic and idiom as a collective feeling in
the production of form. The theme or myth, in Aristotelian terms, follows, but is never
done away with.

From the primordial agony of expressive means, of utilizing the structured
surface or image, engraving proceeds to the awe of poetic feeling, its vehicle being
the visual idiom of form, which is the boundary of all art, not only that of image. Near
Katraki, Koustas learned to make good use of poetic visual idiom with poetic
prudence and also to employ color in engraving with inspiration and temperance. He
also most assuredly realized the prominent role of sketching in engraving.
Koustas overcame the 20-year guilt of the 1960-80 engraving circles, led by
Kostas Grammatopoulos, who clumsily used color in engraving and demoted it to the
level of decoration and advertising. The young, charismatic Greek engravers, while
waving goodbye to tradition, now take sure steps towards the awakening of the 21st
century electronic age.

Koustas was fortunate to have found himself at this turning point and his
unexpected appearance is not entirely inexplicable. It is grounded in the new social
givens and in the singularity of his brilliant talent.

I have always interpreted his work based on these objective facts and I
wholeheartedly admit that the new things happening in engraving excite me. This
time, his subject matter influenced his idiom. This can be legibly seen in his
individual exhibition at the Hellenic American Union.

The theme, at least on a first level, is rock painting (or petroglyphs) and it is
from this angle that he mobilizes his expressive means. Rock painting, the art of
people 5000 and even 20,000 years ago, are engravings on stone, the archetypal font
of poetic feeling. It takes a gifted artist to tap the innermost workings of the poetic
vacuum, of abstract and historical time, functioning today as the end of a long
journey, like the echoes of elegies and a commemorative entreaty to the viable past.
Art uses man’s past in a multi-fold way: as proof and historical testimony, as
communication, ideology, religious worship and such. Each time it asks the same
question: what is the stuff man is made of? And the question ever remains open and
unanswered. And fortunately so!

Mythological and historical time function significantly in Koustas’s work
passing through the filter of aesthetic emotion of the artistic word. In any case let us
accept that there are always reasons underlying things even though appearances may
distort reality, whatever that may be, in art as well, i.e., the poetic procedure of selfdeception
in the perishable and imperishable evolution.

A primitively sculptured chiseled stone dating back 700,000 years was
recently found in Greece. If this is true – and why shouldn’t it be – the rock paintings
dated at 5,000 and 20,000 years seem like a toy in the hands of man a mere yesteryear
ago. Anthropological research has made advances in determining the sources of
intelligent instinct, revealing man’s need to express his identity even in the crudest of
ways. What remains to be clarified even further is that critical stage of evolution in
lingual and intellectual communication and at the same time the fear of the
inexplicable natural phenomena that was the stepping stone to today’s stage in the
Homo humanus’s development. From possessing a flair for style and dedicating art to
religious worship, man has arrived at the modern-day world of aesthetics and
imaginative poetic insight. But let us dwell a bit longer on rock paintings, Koustas’s
material and theme, which influenced his idiom and elevated the aesthetics and
central issues of his engraving to new levels in research and expression. Five of his
earlier works have been included in the exhibition, so that the visitor can observe the
artist’s spectacular development from the past up to the present day.

This time – and it is the first time – the artist in question exhibits independent
sketches that were made in preparation for the final engraving print. On display are
also the moulds (stones) on which he etches the images, interspersed among the
prints. With the four types of engraving in mind, Koustas’s prints, moulds and
sketches present the triptych of his dialectics in his artistic idiom. And this is what
makes up today’s exhibition.

His latest work hints at the inner workings of art and the image is dissolved in
the agony of the transition from the representational depiction of magic social realism,
a poetic mixture where reality and dream meet. His main concern remains the renewal
of his visual idiom, fortifying the personal nature of his work. Koustas is well aware
that the new platform of ideas is dominated by the electronic technology culture and
that his theme gives him a particular advantage in benefiting from the rich cultural
heritage of an ancient people.

Dimitris Galanis, Angelos Theodoropoulos, Euthymis Papadimitriou, Nikos
Venturas and Vasso Katraki bravely served in the industrial and social class
revolution in art. Indeed, their work is awe-inspiring as it dynamically pioneers
through the 19th and 20th centuries.

The discerning visitor to the exhibition will be justifiably surprised at the
authentic aesthetic feeling stripped of pompous rhetoric and feckless ancestorworship.
The images are perfectly balanced in his artistic compositions. They identify
in form with the cries and the sacred shadows of mythology, religious worship and
history, officiating in the active silence of time and simultaneously driving today’s
21st century pioneering art.

And if I were happy at my initial diagnosis and prescription of Koustas’s art, I
am now twice as happy that I catch him in the act of his new artistic adventure, as he
brings to light through his visual idiom the wondrous world of archetypal art in the
enclosed elegy of silence of the poetic visual concept.

His new subject matter, the theme of rock painting, is enriched by rhythmic
breaths, as his work is facilitated by the large size of the engravings, the materials, the
etching in stone, the novel texture that stone lends to the works, and the new aesthetic
appeal as an expression of art. The next element to impress is the monumental
dimension of the artistic compositions with vociferations on an epic scale.
Through this polyphonic expression of idiom, theme and skill, he was able to
rise to the quality of Greco-European engraving, and even to that of the international
spectrum. It is by no accident that he won the award at the Osaka Triennale. He
convinced and moved the international judging committee with his work and his work
alone. He convinced them. This word suffices. Just as Vasso Katraki convinced the
judges at the Venice Biennale 40 years ago and was awarded the internationally
acclaimed First Prize by unanimous vote.

Archetypal art and contemporary art of the 20th century are fruitfully united in
Koustas’s work and it is from this vantage point that he approaches the idiom and
poetic psyche of Klee. The 5000 and 20,000-year-old rock etchings lend Koustas a
ready-made aesthetic and logical abstraction, liberating him from the anxiety of dull
art theory.

The elements of idiom, aesthetics, color, rock engraving on the surface of a
structured image, sketches and space all compose the basis for the functioning and
expression of engraving and the artistic engraver. And from this viewpoint
overthrown is the chronic hesitation of Greek artists to use in an inspired and daring
way the wealth of cultural geometry flowing like a sacred river from a source buried
in centuries past. Long before anyone else, contemporary central Europeans caught on
to the value of the ancient Greek past: Matisse, Rodin, Cézanne, Moore, Malevich,
Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti and others dared to draw inspiration from the glorious
Greek past. When the Greeks – those who did in fact attempt this – tapped the wealth
of their cultural heritage, they achieved admirable results in their work.

There are about twenty significant Greek artists, Yiannoulis Halepas being
perhaps the most eminent, whose work stands out in the contemporary Greco-
European culture of 20th century modern art. Suffice it for one to boldly penetrate into
the originality of archetypal art. What is also quite moving is how this culture bursts
forth, liberating the past that had been trapped for centuries in the poetic vacuum of
time. The Homo humanus culture, fresh and ingenious, is expressed in forceful
images carrying a deeper meaning beyond the fourth dimension of time and space. All
the above function as self-therapy for the artist who battles with the most profound
confessions of his blissful poetic agony, when he was called upon to follow the
arduous path of art. It is the red dream in the seams of chaos and the exquisite torment
of a world pillaged by continual self-deception that we call art in order to heal
ourselves.

One may or may not take the new or forgotten paths of a faraway past and
possibly one may trust what one feels or then again feel insecure like an insatiable
nomad on a quest. One may walk, see, hear, observe, intervene, be joyful and
consequently feel hesitant with the gaping wounds of sacred and age-old doubt. And
time may silently pass one by in the form of guileless day-to-day living and slyly lull
one to sleep with the shiny charm of living, the defiance of the body in the face of the
mystic being.

This is how you and I and everyone else unsuspectingly pass on, wounded
with tragic poetic feeling. However, we will have at last taken one step forward with
changed insight, having observed on another level the ideology of nature, art and
society’s fruitful erotic chemistry. We will finally have managed to scratch the
surface of time as its large and small pathfinders. On the way we will have discovered
the basic covenants of self-knowledge’s superciliousness, overthrowing up to a point
the strict codes inherent in the motions we go through in our daily psycho-intellectual
life. It is the incarnation of the multiple meanings of the collective poetic subconscience
while coming to a deeper realization that a priori nothing is a given.

Time differentiates reality as we see it and we participate as part of the whole
of its dynamic movements without staking claims to dominate perpetually moving
evolution, which is a covert and simultaneously overt, two-way channel of
communication and expression.

In short, all the above directly concern Koustas’s agony, aesthetic and artistic
odyssey. His work has developed over the years; it has been built on experience and
while his artistic creation continues to blossom, it feeds on the inner resources of
nature and given historical reality.

(Translated from Greek into English by Thalia Bisticas)

ASTROLAVOS

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:44:27 GMT

With orchestrations that continually reach new peaks, Apostolos Koustas has
innovatively transcended the boundaries of the engraving art.

This gifted artist’s visual idiom, reflecting his internal world, attunes in the most
inspired way even with the ‘soul’ of his raw material, which in this truly special case
is cement and not stone. This attunement imposes a unified rhythm and pulse that
with unvarying intensity and breadth always pervades the artist’s personality, his
gestural and aesthetic intervention in his material, his style and the aura of his visual
mode of expression.

The creator’s expression is monumental, independent of the specific dimensions of his
works, and the purely material part transubstantiates not only the composition but also
even the inextricable bond to the cement plaque, which is animated in his hands on
equal terms into an archetype.

This archetype is activated into an essential, transcendental and metaphysical
presence. It is a self-reliant presence; here the composition and the surface work
together with exemplary complementation as a unique ‘organism’.
All that we experience – and not simply observe – in Koustas’s works is extremely
evocative and delineates the innovative line between representation and abstraction,
between an immediacy eloquent in intimations and the eternally purported truth,
between the earthly and metaphysical element in order to activate a bond with
cosmogony itself.

Endowed with these rare qualities, irrespective of inspiration and its sources –
prehistoric times and mythology, Byzantium, references to nature and physiology –
the artist’s creations come to life as outgrowths of a unique inspiration/expression
whose sole guideline is genuine pulse and the instinctive inclination for creation.
His forms create associations between the Earth goddess and the Virgin Mary. He
alludes to prehistoric idols that eternally hint at metaphysical forms and ‘beings’.
Creatures of nature such as birds, horses trees and fossils are presented as both
steadfast and bursting with vitality.

Ideograms and fragmentary styles, hieratic to the extreme, precisely like the forms in
whichever shape and position they appear, are timeless, metaphysical presences and
beings of manifold meaning. These beings, beyond the specific composition, truly
conquer and define the space around them.

And it is precisely this ‘genesis of beings’ taking place every time in Koustas’s work
that bears testimony to the high quality of his work. It is the highest verification of the
definition of genuine art: that art can be determined as such only when it contains and
idea and is not merely an imitation.

This precise idea, timelessly incarnated in the artist’s oeuvre in the most poetic and
metaphysical way possible, reveals an essential and at the same time telling truth. It is
a message that irrevocably penetrates our worlds in order to ensure catharsis through
the transubstantiating power of art undistracted by external factors.

DETOUR

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:42:52 GMT

Flows of mythology, movements of time and gurgling waters are heard on the edge of
the perishable and potential existence and everything is aligned with the visual
components of Apostolos Koustas’s forms and compositions. And as we can see,
these poetic expressions charged with freedom are renewed from one exhibition to the
next.

The time and space of the art of engraving lies in these expressions: rafts immobilized
by form and anchored boats on the edge of the day’s dawning and where the black
outlines of night are drawn.

Floating and fluid images hang onto the innocent artistic gaze of racial and historical
memory and these points of view and navigation determine the plunge and penetration
into the psyche of sacred daily routine sanctified by the wisdom of the heart and the
sharp instinct of the artist.

The Missolonghi lagoon now hosts broken childhood dreams, the shattered elegy and
time, all rooted castaways of novel of social testimony with internal dramatic and
lyrical explosions of life and death.

Mythical skeletons of birds, fish and retired boats insist on being documented as part
of the decorated and majestic past as they pass into the explosive present day and into
the future. They are the tangible time of reason and the blasted raft of the expression
of the engraving art, which possesses size, rhythm and sensual idiom. In the end,
engraving is a kind of navigator of the soul and the mind, both poetically traveling
together to the cape of dreams and the unknown future, which is dramatically dug
with craters that seem chiseled ancient by god-stonemasons to accommodate the
vastness of human trials and fate.

And, as always, most of the products of the soul and mind are proposed by man
himself for himself, for art, for life and love – as long as each one of us is well
prepared to be struck by the brightly burning brilliance of the celebrations of freedom.
The engraver/painter Apostolos Koustas lives according to the biorhythms of the fluid
material of images that lyrically and fleetingly pass through water, air and color. The
source of these elements is the internal voice of communication and the pulse of the
art of engraving as it was handed down to us by D. Galanis, A. Theodoropoulos,
Euthymis Papadimitriou, N. Ventouras and the leading lady of Greco-European
engraving, Vaso Katraki.

EXHIBITION CATALOG

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:04:00 GMT

The very title of this print captures the synthesis of a primordial theme. Koustas
presents us with a space with emblematic images of a paradise lost. Here we observe
the harmonious dialogue between the century-old tree with other trees or branches in
lineal pieces in its interior that suggest gouge cuts on wood or linoleum. In the
foreground, a zigzag shape represents a river with its fish. As the focal point of the
work, supported by wide cuts and in contour with the tree, three white birds can be
seen that, in flight, establish the main curve and circular movement. The colors are
harmonious by analogy and by way of the birds, the presence of the light-dark
contrast of the work’s general design is evident.

EXHIBITION CATALOG - HELLENIC AMERICAN UNION

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:25:54 GMT

Prehistoric frescoes, the marks and symbols engraved in stone, are man’s first
substantiated attempt to speak about his person, placing himself in a material
environment, not haphazardly, but in a way that he himself desired.
The image, seen in this light, constitutes the Word, and Word is no longer associated
with Broca’s area of the brain.

The moment before engraving was born, there was chaos and darkness. It was
engraving that gave order to chaos and light to darkness. Art creates life and its forms;
Art as Word gives birth to life.

The exhibition of Apostolos Koustas’s work at the Hellenic American Union refers to
prehistoric frescoes and engravings in stone.

Koustas’s age sets him apart from the chaos of modernism; nonetheless he endeavors
to shape his world and looks for a fixed point of reference to set the earth in motion
all over again.

Koustas’s mentors were Sikeliotis and Katraki. Yet Koustas does not share their
references: expatriation, the Party, the Resistance or even the climate during the Civil
War. He seeks points of reference in a more distant past – at the dawn of Word and
Gesture. He turns to the elemental. He draws directly upon the points from where the
subjective takes form and becomes objective. The point from where imitative magic
describes man’s pro-gram who wants to recognize himself, while at the same time
recognizing the world surrounding him.

How will Koustas avoid the atemporal? He selects an altogether ingenious solution.
He uses the dominant material of the modern environment. He engraves on cement
slabs. He has the courage to pit himself against materials belonging to the very world
he questions. He has the courage to appropriate this material and make it a part of the
new world that he envisions and designs.

Reference to prehistoric frescos in Koustas’s work takes on a further dimension,
which is solely the choice of the artist himself. Koustas’s work exudes poetry.
Undoubtedly each plunge into the collective conscience carries poetic overtones. But
here Koustas has managed to make his engravings emerge as flowers on stone.

Flowers from within the cement.
If that isn’t poetry, then what is?

MEMORY’S ETCHINGS

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:22:00 GMT

Misolonghi. The 1950s. Fuzzy memories from a burdened past: the white stone of
neoclassical houses with damp red tile roofs; reflections of water on wide open
spaces; a flurry of colour in the line of the lagoon echoing the line of the River
Aracynthos; the grey and green of springtime from sea level, from the eye level of a
young boy.

Misolonghi: a passageway of forms and shapes, frayed strains of profound voices
endlessly insisting we hearken to age-old tale of the tragic Meleager, son of Oeneus, a
torch blazing in the night, at the mercy of the wind, asking for his mother Althea in
the windless air of Calydon. A song of human fate in the darkness and the light.

I have the feeling that from all the passages of sounds, forms and colours, Apostolos
Koustas, born very close to the temple of the sacred city of Calydon, retained the
element of secrecy of the myth that links human life to things, that links the creator to
creations. Shuddering from the threat of perishability, the artist’s strong sense
bewitches the magical archetypal icon, which seems to emerge from the depths of
time, as he endeavours to erect form, breaking the barriers of time and place, pushing
aside corrosive and contrary powers that shatter its integrity. Every journey reveals
the soul of a new contribution to the collective expression of the world.

Apostolos Koustas’s present ‘revelation of the soul’ attempts to assimilate and
interpret the artistic expression of a new world that attempts to subjugate the mythical
element to the revealing and pure truth. He defines the relation between man and
things in another dimension and urges us to look beyond things: it is Byzantine Art
that goes beyond the visions of the apparent and aspires to conceive the concept, the
visible vehicle being the icon. It has an immediate sense of the material and
simultaneously intuits the concept: a symbol of the beginning and the end.

Apostolos Koustas possess a deep knowledge of human emotions and the
manifestations of epic, lyrical or tragic magnificence (like the Byzantine artist, who,
through abstraction, tries to reveal the certitude of the indestructibility of the Divine)
and through his own abstraction respects the cohesive internal structure of the
universal myth. He does not distort it. He employs the symbols of early Christian art
as tried and tested refractions, traces of the steady course of man’s odyssey. He does
not warp their earlier meanings, nor does he cut them off from the Christian axis; he
but extends and recycles these symbols into eternity. ΙΧΘΥΣ (ancient Greek word for
fish) is not only the depiction of sacred worship in Egypt and Syria, nor just the
acronym for the Greek words for Christ, which enjoyed widespread popularity in
early Christian art and literature. It is also man’s link to life, a guiding light of myth in
a unified interchange between the secret rhythm that rings through its coexistence
with man. The peacock is part of this eternal rhythm, a symbol of immortality and
Paradise (of the garden of serene co-existence). The same goes for the Cross, the most
sacred symbol of Passion, deeply rooted in the life and faith of Christianity; it is a
sign of uplifting and hope, the Wood and Tree of our lives according to the unrivalled
Byzantine musician, Romanos the Melodos.

All the engraver’s themes embrace symbolic mythology. He juxtaposes the visible
and the implied: Hermes and Angel; Gaia and the Virgin Mary holding the Christ
child (the archetype of maternity in Christianity); Vellerenfontis, who slew the
Chimera, and St George who killed the dragon (the battle of good and evil, the
destruction or continuance of the secret rhythm in the function of the myth); the
victorious Hercules against river god Achelous and Saint Demetrios, the deliverer of
Byzantine Thessalonica from its invaders. The austere figure of the saint guides us to
the centre of ecumenical Christian humanism, but at the same time also refers to the
value of classical writings that the Byzantines diffused to the West through their
manuscripts. One such sample can be found in the manuscript of the Cremastos
Monastery from the 12th century, a testimony to the ancestral concern to salvage and
diffuse Greek classical literature.

The Divine Humiliation depicts the dimension of life, in fact, of life eternal, in its
endless struggle between the perishable and the imperishable, in the expression of
tragic and intangible spirituality.

Apostolos Koustas’s optimistic and bright outlook does not estrange him from the
well-known and established idiom of his creative expression. His art penetrates and
surpasses his object of study, elevating it to the level of his secret communion with
life, the secrets of Nature and man’s inspiration, irrevocably, unvaryingly and
temperately introducing it into the secret rhythm of the universal inspiration of Art.

WRITTEN IN STONE

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:18:13 GMT

This gifted artist’s visual idiom, reflecting his internal world, attunes in the most
inspired way even with the ‘soul’ of his material, which in this truly special case is
cement and not stone. This attunement imposes a unified rhythm and pulse that with
unvarying intensity and breadth always pervades the artist’s personality, his gestural
and aesthetic intervention in his material, his style and the aura of his visual mode of
expression.

The creator’s expression is monumental, independent of the specific dimensions of his
works, and the purely material part transubstantiates not only the composition but
even the inextricable bond to the cement plaque, which is animated in his hands, into
an archetype on equal terms.

All that we experience – and not simply observe – in Koustas’s works is extremely
evocative and delineates the innovative line between representation and abstraction,
between an immediacy eloquent in intimations and the eternally purported truth,
between the earthly and metaphysical element in order to activate a bond with
cosmogony itself.

AN ENGRAVER EXPLORES TECHNIQUE

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:12:00 GMT

Apostolos Koustas invents his own technique
and makes images that recall the ancient past

Experimentation with new techniques of image making seems to be an issue of
growing concern among contemporary artists. In part intrigued by
technological advances and the potential they offer for art, artists are also
interested in redefining traditional media by often blending different techniques for a
hybrid, visual effect.

Considering this emphasis on method, it seems appropriate that the solo
exhibition of engraver Apostolos Koustas, currently on view at the Hellenic American
Union, revolves around the technique and process involved in making an engraving –
all the more so, given that Koustas has invented his own technique, which is based on
tradition and an intricate manual process, rather than the recent high-tech methods of
digital print engraving.

Resembling the cave drawings of Stone Age man, the engravings of Koustas
are meant to recall the origins of culture and, by metaphor, the fundamental, machinefree
techniques of engraving. A display of cement-based molds, drawings, engravings
and unique engravings on canvas is meant to draw attention to the different stages
involved in the elaborate process of engraving. A 25-minute video that shows Koustas
at work follows this process step by step.

Unlike most engravers, Koustas does not use ready-made molds but prepares
his own by blending cement and marble dust, thus ensuring control over size and
texture. In order to recreate the grainy texture of rocks, Koustas scatters pebbles on a
metal slab and pours over it his mix of cement. Once it dries, he removes the cement
slab, turns it on its rough side (whose surface texture has been created by the pebbles)
which he then scrubs with sand to give it further texture. Once the slab is prepared to
actually resemble the surface of a rock, Koustas begins drawing on it and then carving
out the lines he has drawn. He then takes paper, covers it with layers of differently
colored paint and applies it on his mold. Each mold usually yields a series of 10 or 20
engravings which, if successful, should all be identical.

Koustas also makes one-of-a-kind engravings with canvas. More like paintings
than engravings, but with the same grainy visual effect, these works have an
interesting and unusual color palette; the salmon hues are especially pleasing.
Although Koustas keeps pace with all the latest engraving techniques (he has
participated in major international engraving exhibitions, including Osaka’s Trienale),
he prefers to work without technical support. Inventing traditional-based techniques is
his way of giving a new status to the art of engraving and distinguishing it from the
more mechanical techniques that yield infinite reproducible images. In light of the
knowledge that engraving was originally invented to produce images in multiples, this
is an interesting twist.

Works by Apostolos Koustas at the Hellenic American Union (22 Massalias, 210-368
000) to June 4.

Review from KATHIMERINI ENGLISH EDITION

Thursday, May 22, 2003

THE ENGRAVING OF APOSTOLOS KOUSTAS

Sofia Ioannou — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:07:41 GMT

Apostolos Koustas was born in Misolonghi and that is where he made his
first contact with the art of painting under the tutelage of Gerasimos Kassolas. Before
moving to Athens, he had the opportunity of holding two exhibitions in his birthplace.
In Athens he immediately made contact with the engraver Tassos, who gave
him the opportunity to meet and also collaborate with engraver Yiorgos Sikeliotis.

His meeting with the great engraver Vaso Katraki probably came about by
divine intervention for it was she who urged him to devote himself exclusively to the
genre of engraving. This critical timing and choice proved how better suited he was to
engraving as means of artistic expression.

Koustas possesses, I believe, a charismatic ability, a gift from nature: that of
the master creator. And the master creator helped the artist Koustas to easily gain the
appreciation of great engravers, with whom he also collaborated at every step. Vaso
Katraki quickly taught him the secrets and potential of engraving on hard and soft
sandstone in great depth. She also liberated him and guided him towards a solid mode
of expression, which is based on the dynamic relation between classical and modern
style.

Today he works with stone and other engraving materials that he himself has
invented. He prints his large artistic compositions on cement plaques that he has
constructed on his own. This material, in combination with his innovative techniques,
give him new opportunities to solve the basic problem of size in engraving and to add
colour to this artistic genre without disrupting its visual and aesthetic balance. This
seems utterly natural for the master creator Apostolos Koustas: to work with various
materials and try out their different expressive capabilities. In this way he was able to
avoid tactics and habits of many of his colleagues, who insist on employing colour in
engraving in the same way they would in painting with techniques that for years these
engravers/colourers have shamelessly used to ravage the art of engraving with lewd
obsession.

Let’s hope that we do not have to read again in reviews by university
professors and art critics an attempt to define Koustas’s artistic compositions as
“cement etchings”, as was the case when Vaso Katraki’s were recklessly and
mindlessly described as “stone etchings” just because she employed stone in her
engravings.

In an artistic genre as serious as engraving proposes to be, one can enjoy the
results of Koustas’s painstaking endeavours in his ingenuous artistic thrill, his
lyricism and the structural solidity of his compositions both when these draw upon the
wealth of Greek mythology as well as upon contemporary social mythology and the
great appeal and aesthetic vision of the technological age.

February 1991