Costas Varotsos
“Art knows no boundaries. Art abolishes frontiers, because ideas transcend boundaries and go beyond frontiers. This is the conclusion to be drawn from the career of Costas Varotsos, a Greek artist of the world, whose work has always relied on his Greek inheritance — Doric plainness, Greek abstraction, the minimum, the synopsis, Aristotelian reduction, the pre-Socratic fundamental, light, transparency, simplicity, and the incorporeal Platonic idea — while at the same time opening onto the horizon of the world, and even of the universe: the cosmos.”
—Matoula Skaltsa
Costas Varotsos, Gate, 2010, Iron and glass, 79 x 39.5 x 5 inches
Costas Varotsos is a Greek sculptor whose work explores light, transparency, public space, and the relationship between artwork, viewer, and environment. Working often with glass and steel, he creates sculptures that are physically present yet visually changeable, responding to light, weather, movement, and architectural context.
Varotsos studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and architecture at the University of Pescara. His public artworks have been installed in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Egypt, and the United States, including The Poet in Nicosia, The Runner in Athens, Untitled at the Washington Convention Center, and La Luna in Rome. His work has been exhibited at C. Grimaldis Gallery, the National Art Gallery in Athens, Giorgio Persano Gallery, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, and the Greek Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale.