ANTONAKOS: RED+
SHIN GALLERY
68 Orchard Street, NY
February 28 – April 14, 2019
Seven works of one color
and widely different scale
from the Sixties to 2007
in a specific architecture
UNTITLED NEON CANVAS
(FOR MICHAEL KRICHMAN) 1986
Permanent collection Wadsworth Atheneum
Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Now on view
Painted unstretched canvas, neon
83 1/2″ x 54″
“ENTER” 2011
New installation permanent collection
National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens.
Neon, painted metal
27′ x 5″ x 3’
Photo: Stamatis Schizakis, Athens
“ANTONAKOS: THE ROOM CHAPEL”
Allentown Art Museum, 31 North Fifth Street, Allentown, PA
“The Room Chapel” has been beautifully reconstructed within the galleries of the Allentown Art Museum. It will remain on view there through September 15, 2019. One of Antonakos’s most evocative Meditation Chapels, it is defined by its proportions, its three Neon Panels, and its unusual doorway, which recalls the spirit of ancient architecture.
In 1996, for the original presentation at the Art Institute of Boston, Antonakos wrote,
“It is a place for contemplation
in an atmosphere of openness…
where geometry, light, and space can be
seen and experienced for themselves.”
ALSO ON VIEW AT ALLENTOWN:
MODEL FOR “THE CHAPEL OF THE HEAVENLY LADDER” 1995
This powerful iron model, c. 3′ x 3′ x 3 1/2′, maintains the presence of its full-scale construction at the XLVII Venice Biennale, 1997, now permanently installed at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Salonica, Greece.
“JOURNEY: A DRAWING IN 72 UNITS” 1998
IN EXHIBITION AT THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD,
NATIONAL ART MUSEUM OF CHINA
NOVEMBER 2018 THROUGH 2019
Curated by Katerina Koskina and Anna Mykoniati, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
This sequence of colored pencil on vellum drawings, each 7″ square, is meant to be installed in a rhythmic progression around the four walls of the gallery so that a spatial harmony between the sheets and the spaces between them is achieved.
“STEPHEN ANTONAKOS: NEON ROOMS”
Full-page color reproductions of the artist’s eleven major interior Rooms (1965-2000), seven drawings for Rooms (1968-70), and one model (1969).
Design and production by Thomas Whitridge,
Ink, Inc., NY. Published to coincide with the recent exhibition of Antonakos’s “Proscenium” at the Neuberger Museum of Art.
24 pages
“WHITE LIGHT” 1962 IS NOW IN THE PERMANENT COLLECTION OF THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
This complex work is the key transition from Antonakos’s early handmade Assemblages of found objects and materials to his bold, spatial neon geometry of the following fifty years.
The softness and delicacy of the work’s interior is a world apart from the declarative shapes and strong contrasts of its aggressive surrounds. The tender white light deep in the center of its enclosure may be the earliest prediction of the artist’s later Chapels. The neon forms – first square, then circular – radiate out beyond their black wood “obstacles” and activate the space with redness.
Stephen Antonakos
White Light, 1962
Wood, paint, neon, aluminum, fur, and light bulb
Overall: 37 3/4 x 37 3/4 x 21 3/8in. (95.9 x 95.9 x 54.3 cm)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Gift of an anonymous donor 2018.99