Philolaos: Between sculpture and design
DS.WRITER:
Σοφία Θρουβάλα
Central Image: Philolaos Tloupas (1923-2010) Large screen, circa 1970, Steel | Source: magenxxcentury.com
On the occasion of the anniversary exhibition at P gallery | sculpture, presenting Philolaos’ (Tloupas) maquettes of monumental artworks, it’s time for a retrospection of his work. Philolaos, known using only his first name (like Thodoros), was a great sculptor, who, we’d say, dealt with the concepts of “collectible design” and “functional sculpture” long before those terms appeared and were established. Born in Thessaly, he left for France where he stayed for all his life, building a career filled with creativity and experimentation, while also maintaining close ties with Greece, which was his quiet place and provided him with inspiration.
Image Source: communedesign.tumblr.com
A main characteristic of Phiololaos’ work is his deep and endless curiosity to explore and tame each material, studying its properties to the point where we could “divide” his life into periods of “obsession” with each material. During the 1950s he starts working consistently with lead but the material’s inability to reach monumental dimensions eventually led him to the “discovery” of iron, with which he replaced lead, and his passionate relationship with it, using various quantities and qualities of metal in any possible scale, form and, above all, use.
Image Source: communedesign.tumblr.com
In 1958 he builds, “from ground zero”, his atelier and home in Volos, Greece and in Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse in France, based on his own designs, which depicted a personal utopia, dominated by lime in the case of Volos and metal in the case of Saint-Rémy and light and water, elements that not only bring together his work but also his dual origins (Greece-France). In both buildings, which are by definition very different from each other, and this is because he is inspired each time by the "cultural" landscape but also by the use he would make of each interior, he designs and implements every detail with his own hands, every piece of furniture, every object of his daily life, resulting in a total work of art.
Photo: Alkis Voliotis | Source: hellenicdiaspora.org
From the emblematic chairs and the television unit to the one-of-a-kind stainless steel toilet, the cooking utensils, the equally necessary cabinet, the whitewashed walls in Volos - a reference to the Greek landscape- and the glass roof in France -a reference to the classic French attic-, Philolaos contemplates, invents, curates and creates spaces, objects and their relations. In the first exhibition of the sculptor’s furniture (at Château du Val Fleury, 2021) titled «sculptures à vivre» (sculptures for "living"), which was concluded in 2021, more than 100 objects and valuable designs from the sculptor’s personal archive were exhibited. Both the exhibition and its title clearly express the unique spirit and belief of the artist that art accompanies life, a stance that is today directly connected to the field of design.
Image Source: communedesign.tumblr.com
His need, his vision, to organically incorporate nature and therefore life into his work, is remarkable. Above all, Philolaos wanted his works to be in the environment as part of it and not as an intervention. His site-specific works stand between sculpture and architecture, while in many instances they are neither, they are however incorporated into the urban or non-urban landscape in such a way that size is not an issue in itself - it does not disturb, it is always carefully considered even in the case of monumental works. Architecture and decoration may be extensions of his sculptural work, however, they explore not only aesthetics and functionality from a contextual point of view but also the very important concept of functionality and sustainability of the work as intention and action.
Aqueduct | Image Source: hellenicdiaspora.org
Discovering the properties of stainless steel, he creates furniture for his home and workshop that would be able to bear the wear and tear of everyday life and intense use, without corroding or being dangerous to the user, while this material also allowed him to produce a significant body of work inside and outside built space at all possible scales, communicating with the landscape.
Detail of washed concrete in the Aqueduct | Image source: hellenicdiaspora.org
With a significant background in public -monumental often- art and being in the process of understanding yet another material, that is, whitewashed concrete and its interaction with metals, he creates his most important sculptural -albeit of architectural nature- work. His encounter with architect André Gomis signifies the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. In 1963, Gomis entrusted him with the creation of Châteaux d'eau de Valence, in Drôme, two towers/sculptures 52 and 57 meters high, completed in 1971. A full 10 years later, in 1981, the work received the first prize for the best work of public art for the decade 1970-1980, a period when sculptural interventions were "the norm" of contemporary art.
Volos Port | Image Source: hellenicdiaspora.org
To this day, there have been few artists that have approached art so holistically, as a discipline, concept and carrier of everyday life. Philolaos designs collectible and unique works for the interior of his home, playing with materials and looking for solutions that serve the human being first of all and while doing this, he never loses his identity, that of the metallurgist-sculptor. In the very decades when the term contemporary public and/or site-specific sculpture was born, which often appears parallel to architecture if not identical to it (through official urban planning texts and administrative acts), Philolaos was already doing the very things these terms aimed to describe while guiding each work by maintaining his own philosophy. He wants art to join the private and public spheres, the environment (open or closed) with volume and material in close conversation. The management of his personal space in such a way that it is understood as a "collection", as a set of work to be used that brings together all the distinguishing characteristics of its creator, can be directly linked to today's collectible design.
Image Source: hellenicdiaspora.org
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