Stephen Antonakos
'Four, Once More'
Four, Once More presents four boldly hued neon works by Stephen Antonakos within the exterior glass Jewel Box vitrines of the SCAD Museum of Art, celebrating both the artist’s centennial and the 15-year anniversary of the museum’s opening. The exhibition re-creates the premier Jewel Box installation from 2011, which showcased Antonakos’ signature use of neon since 1960, inspired by both the dazzling lights of New York City that he encountered as a young artist from Greece and the transcendent qualities of light found in the gilded Byzantine sacred spaces of his homeland. Activating the distinct architecture of the museum’s historic façade, Antonakos’ work engages color and light, moving beyond the strict formal concerns of Minimalism to highlight the spiritual potential of his chosen medium.
Four, Once More presents four boldly hued neon works by Stephen Antonakos within the exterior glass Jewel Box vitrines of the SCAD Museum of Art, celebrating both the artist’s centennial and the 15-year anniversary of the museum’s opening. The exhibition re-creates the premier Jewel Box installation from 2011, which showcased Antonakos’ signature use of neon since 1960, inspired by both the dazzling lights of New York City that he encountered as a young artist from Greece and the transcendent qualities of light found in the gilded Byzantine sacred spaces of his homeland. Activating the distinct architecture of the museum’s historic façade, Antonakos’ work engages color and light, moving beyond the strict formal concerns of Minimalism to highlight the spiritual potential of his chosen medium.
About the artist
Stephen Antonakos’ (b. 1926, Agios Nikolaos, Greece; d. 2013, New York) work with neon since 1960 lent the medium new perceptual and formal meaning — first in New York then internationally. His use of spare, complete, and incomplete geometric neon forms ranged from direct 3D installations to painted canvases, chapels, walls, and his renowned backlit panels featuring painted or gold surfaces. Starting in the 1970s he installed more than 55 architecturally scaled permanent public works in the U.S., Europe, Israel, and Japan. He conceived work in relation to site, scale, proportion, and character — and to the space it shares with viewers. He referred to his art as “real things in real spaces,” intending the works to be seen without reference to anything outside the immediate visual and kinetic experience. In addition to neon, major aspects of Antonakos’ practice also included color pencil drawings on paper and vellum, collage work, conceptual packages, small-edition artist’s books, silver and white reliefs, prints, and — since 2011 — series of framed, 3D gold works. The artist moved to New York with his family in 1930. In the late 1940s, after returning from the U.S. Army, he established his first studio in New York’s fur district. From the early 1960s until his passing in 2013, he worked in New York’s SoHo neighborhood.
Credits
Four, Once More is organized by SCAD Museum of Art curator Ben Tollefson.
