Lori Bookstein Presents Antonakos' WHITES 2/17-3/20

Lori Bookstein Fine Art presents Antonakos: Whites, an exhibition of the artist's white work in various media and different scales, focusing on the interaction of light with particular surfaces and edges beginning February 17th through March 20th.

Drawn from the last 30 years, the examples embody the formalist engagement with physical and spatial relationships that has defined the work since the mid-1960s. Consistently non-referential, his geometric abstractions are, in his own words, "real things in real space."

The interdependence of light and space, and the concern for specific architectural context and scale, that this exhibition seeks to exemplify, were powerfully evident in the 1960s in successive one-person exhibitions in New York and throughout the country. These included shows at the Fischbach Gallery, New York City; Neon Sculpture at the Fort Worth Art Center, and The Magic Theatre at the Nelson Atkins Gallery, Kansas City, among others.

Though presenting only 16 works, the exhibition attempts to suggest the breadth and some of the essential qualities of the artist's work. Like the "incomplete" geometry of his motifs, the selection may recall Beckett's phrase, "complete, but with missing parts."

Complementing this exhibition is a major new Panel with neon permanently installed in the Olympic Tower Atrium, 645 Fifth Avenue. Commissioned by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, "The Road to Mistra" is surfaced with gold and aluminum leaf, an homage to the Byzantine site in the Peloponnese.

Antonakos was born in Greece in 1926 and has always lived and worked in New York. He began exhibiting in the late 1950s and began working with neon, his signature medium, in 1960. There have been over 100 one-person shows, including a recent 50-year Retrospective in Athens, and over 200 group shows. His work is in many important museum and private collections throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Over 50 permanent Public Works have been installed internationally. In addition to the kinds of work represented in Whites, Antonakos designs Chapels and Meditation Spaces and makes neon Walls, Artist's Books, and collages.

Lori Bookstein Fine Art is located at 138 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY and exhibits Twentieth and Twenty-first Century American art, with a focus on American Modernist art and second generation New York School artists. The gallery also handles Old Master, Impressionist and Abstract Expressionist paintings from private collections. Lori Bookstein Fine Art represents six artist estates and seventeen contemporary artists, ranging from early- and mid-career to established artists. For more information on the exhibit visit http://www.loribooksteinfineart.com.