Tiger

Until 1980, Tsakiris's paintings and engravings were heavily influenced by the work of Francis Bacon, and his compositions incorporated numbers and mathematical symbols, as also words and phrases in Greek and Latin script. The period around 1980 marked Tsakiris's definitive transition to three-dimensional assemblages. Most have a totemic form and their presence in the space creates the impression of a kind of ritual art. In the '90s, viewers were presented with living organisms in artificial ecosystems that Tsakiris created in the exhibition space. Now, it was not a matter of taking art outdoors, but of installing natural processes within the exhibition space.
The cocoons in the drawings, symbols of a gestating process of transformation, whirl and explode, suggesting the temporal dimension of biological necessity. The blots of red that mark the works resemble living nuclei ready to come to fruition. In the metal construction, organic and artistic elements are felicitously juxtaposed: the fragility of eggs and the solidity of metal, their curves and the strict geometry of the stems that support them, their reproductive capacity and the sterility of the technical media. Nature is depicted as being supported or trapped by the instruments that project into the space.