Tree, No 13, 1994

Tassos Christakis’ artistic practice resembles an initiation. His raw material is almost exclusively wood and the transformations it undergoes when it encounters fire. In some cases, his works are the product of the actual burning of the wood. Most of the time, however, Christakis draws on paper (a wood byproduct) with charcoal – the burnt product of the same material. The burning tree, a frontal image of the very materials Christakis uses, is an iconic example of his enterprise. This burning tree is places along the axis of the picture, on a dark ground sparkling with white lights – the results of scraping and scratching the surface of the paper. The solitary burnt-yellow color intimating fire comes from the actual burning of the paper. Christakis’ skillful technique, the preponderance of black-and-white, the minimal composition with the burning tree – a reference to the artist’s own poetic – locate this specific picture as well as his entire oeuvre within the bounds of Minimalism and Conceptualism. Christakis represents these two contemporary art movements in a personal and poetic fashion.