Kosmas Ballis
To view this month's article on Kosmas in Gulfshore Life Magazine click here.
The C
rrupti
n Series
To view this month's article on Kosmas in Gulfshore Life Magazine click here.
The C
rruptin Series 
Abstract sculpture has always posed a terrific challenge to me especially working in the large scale that I do. I push myself to create very complex forms, intricate like the contemporary ideas behind them. There is an underlying theme of balance that exists in all the work; for visual integrity and for actual physical sturdiness. Another theme I like to address is that of change and evolution through time. Every day we change a little faster than the last and we live in an age of informational flux and we’re facing problems with exponential population growth, and there’s always something we’re facing. We’re overloaded and we try to adapt and evolve as fast as we can. There are issues that my generation and the ones after me are going to have to deal with due to poor decisions that have been made. Cancer rates are certainly on the rise, the earth is warming up and problems are facing us that weren’t the case just a decade ago let alone generations ago. We’re on a collision course with disaster. There is no doubt that we will need more energy in the future so finding alternate, less polluting energies should be researched. Many developing nations including my own must take responsibility and not put profit above all else.
I began making stacked sculptures with the intent of making the most elaborate and complex forms I could (just to see if I could). I used molds that I had lying around the studio and some old molds that I had acquired from some elder hobbyists while living in Tallahassee, FL. The work was received very well and I was encouraged by my peers to continue with the work. It was very exciting to create and I had endless ideas that I thought I could work with, including incorporating molds that I could make especially for a particular piece. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing or where I was really heading, I just wanted to make something new and interesting and I wanted to make vertical objects with a lot of visual information. Kurt Weiser was influential to me and the earlier work when he said:
“The work of Kosmas Ballis holds so many possibilities and leaves a lot of room for the viewer to participate. These forms are reminiscent of monkey bars on school playgrounds, sort of a framework for whatever thoughts and associations the viewer brings to the object… As it is said of good music, what isn’t there is as good as what is there.” 2001
I began incorporating decals into the work. The decals (along with the use of molds) help to emphasize repetition and double as decoration. I wanted to create an object that was beautiful (like a bouquet of flowers) and presented a troubling and darker underlying element. I am very appreciative of ceramic as a medium and I love the degree of preciousness it offers. It is very fragile, much like the estuary of life we must live in harmony with it and find balance with it. It will break very easily without proper care.
I have always been concerned about urban sprawl in rural America and perceive it as the lessening of community definition. I am saddened when I visit my hometown and find that it not only looks like the fifty towns I drove through (to get to it), but that my hometown looks like my current town! I love to use multiple images in my work to parody “sameness”. I want the viewer (of my work) to gain a familiarity with it. I try to achieve this by using the same objects throughout different pieces. Molded objects are representative of cookie-cutter, mass-produced items. As the population increases the need to mass produce will become more evident; the question is: Will we continue to further lose our cultural identities as both a community and as individuals? Do giant retail stores and mass-housing, or corporate conglomerates define our cultural identity and where it is ultimately headed? Are what we buy and the house we live in what defines who we are?
My current body of work focuses on an imaginary “center” which is really more like an invisible “energy” within the piece. If you look closely within any given piece of mine you will find balance both visually and physically. Because the pieces are actually stacked, they to some degree rely on each other to hold the piece together as an entire entity. I try to stay centered within the balancing of objects or sometimes (as a visual tool I will use) broken or fragmented imagery to lead the eye into believing that there once was something there to balance it. It is important that wherever I lead the eye, that it somehow makes it back to the center. The center of the piece is like the heartbeat of it all.
I like to work in collections or “series” because it is a great way to keep thoughts grouped together like a storyline. I began with the Evolutionary Bouquet Series (which I spoke about as an Emerging Artist at the NCECA conference 2001) and since have evolved through a couple more [series]. I began with a theme of completeness and wholesomeness in Evolutionary Bouquet, and interestingly from there went into dissection mode where I began deconstructing everything in the work including the wholeness of the images. Objects in the first bouquet were discernible but in later ones became blurred. As a result they became even more fragmented and abstract. I started to copy known objects like spinal columns or cups, spark plugs, etc., and began inventing my own with many small objects and molds, and reintroduced handbuilding into the sculpture. It was like something took over me when I made them because it was a very exciting process sometimes like a performance to assemble. Each sculpture takes about 200 hours to make so I have to be able to be comfortable with the piece I decide to invest the time into.
Certain motifs can still be seen in the work. Recurring themes like overcrowding, hunger, and mass production are among my favorite subject matter and they may be represented by motifs of one or two different stock images I use. There may be strange juxtapositions of objects to evoke different emotions representing a wide range of human concerns; all devices I will use to lure the viewer into the sculpture. While the imagery presents bleakness in many areas, the ideas behind the work are definitely sincere and thoughtful. I treat the surface with a lot of color to lighten the themes a little. Butterflies can often be seen looking in on the microcosms to lend beauty (although they’ll always be trapped because they too are a part of the overall piece). They (the butterflies) contribute a delicacy to the work (and along with the titles [of the works]) help bring ‘form’ to ‘abstract’. It is very important that there is a hint of literal meaning and not just wish wash.
The deep black (apparent in all the work) is used to help the color “escape” from the piece and bring cohesion to it as a whole entity. When juxtaposed to the black, the color pops out and diverts attention from some of the more negative aspects I discussed earlier. I am an optimist at heart and I have hope for humankind which is why I use the bright colors. Color is a beautiful part of life that we can all enjoy, it’s free and I like my sculpture to celebrate the mere existence of color in addition to it being enjoyable to look at.
A lot of the work depends on what interpretation the viewer gives it and I want the viewer’s eyes to stay busy when experiencing it. It should be an exploratory process where something new is felt and discovered with each visit. I can equate this “feeling” with the experience and “feeling” one has in childhood, when everything is new and the mind is constantly looking for something to keep it occupied. At first glimpse they look like tangled abstract candy highways but are really shapes mocking shapes that are made up of many thousands of different pieces. I have given my thoughts behind the sculptures but ultimately the viewer will determine what their meanings are; the beauty of abstract expressive art.
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