Kinetica Artfair

Takis

Vassilakis Takis : b. 1925

Painting is finished. Sculpture revived with Takis and Tinguely and  is here to stay. Salvador Dali, Radio America, 1961

Takis Signals are his most renowned trademark. They are an ongoing  series of tall rods springing from a base on the ground and tapering  towards a finial at the top. Generally speaking, these finials are of  particular symbolic significance and consist of either sculptures or  found-objects. The sculptures are various elements, whose form and  shape evoke primordial symbols. In response to their interpretation,  Takis said; "I am responsible only for manufacturing the symbols.  Their meaning depends for interpretation on each and every one of us".

Some years later he recorded I was always enchanted by aerodromes  and their great radars… It is as if they were monster instruments  recording cosmic events… My last Signals took the form of electric  antennae, like lightning conductors. But they still remained  symbolic, they constituted a modern hieroglyphic language which had  to be translated to be understood. Radar was a great active signal. Everything is mind