Space and color

Jack Barrett is pleased to present the first exhibition opening during the centennial year of Stephen Antonakos (1926-2013). Space and color features Neon Panels and suites of drawings spanning the late 1990s through early 2000s. Throughout his six-decade career, Antonakos stated, “my work is real things in real spaces, no allusions, no language.” He believed that space itself contained both the viewer and the art. Placement is definitive: the elements of a work relate to each other, to the whole, to the wall, and to the surrounding space.

Stephen Antonakos was born in Laconia, Greece in 1926, and emigrated with his family to New York City in 1930. After serving in the U.S. Army, he established his first studio. From 1963 onward, he lived and worked in SoHo.

Antonakos is perhaps best known for his large-scale public neon installations and his Neon Panels. Of the latter, poet Nathan Kernan wrote, “I also think of Stephen’s…wall panels, backed by light escaping from around the edges, as holding back light as one would try to hold back time itself…The spiritual aspect to Stephen’s work was always treated with a gentle touch….”¹.

Drawing was a constant practice from Antonakos’s earliest years. In the 1990s, he began using a four-colored pencil, which with his characteristic back-and-forth movements—was sometimes seen as related to Byzantine mosaics. This association was cultural rather than intentional. These drawings led to a more open, spatial, and less contained field of experience in which movement is inescapable. Their relationships to one another and to their wall spaces are essential.

Through geometry and radiant color, Antonakos invites viewers into a contemplative encounter where light and space converge, reaffirming his enduring belief in art’s capacity to shape experience through direct engagement.