Alexandros Tsolakis is a Greek visual artist with a background in architecture and computation, currently based in London. His ongoing series, Drawings in Code, explores abstract forms created by intricate arrangements of points, constructed with code and ink. His works evoke abstract landscapes, celestial bodies, and musical forces, blending mathematical precision with elements of chaos to create a symphony of particles and rays of light.

After a decade as director with United Visual Artists, Alexandros now works as a solo artist, creative director, and consultant, collaborating with a diverse range of organizations. His most recent exhibition, ARITHMETICS, was showcased at Willoughby Gerrish in London, presenting a unique collection of works on paper and sculptures.

We asked Alexandros about his art, creative process, and inspirations.

You started your career with a background in architecture and computation, then expanded into installation art. How has your architectural training influenced your approach to visual art and creative direction?

There are many mutual aspects between Art and Architecture. There are major differences between them as well. And then, there are intersections, like scenography, exhibition design or acoustics. And then, you’ve got Computation, which also has intersections, like interactive artworks, immersive experiences or video game worldbuilding.

I was lucky in my Architectural studies to follow a curriculum that spun across an incredible range of fields. History of Art, Architectural theory, Synthesis (Composition), Product & Interior Design, Ephemeral Structures, Sculpture, Painting, Urban Design And Planning, Lighting, Ceramics, Acoustics, Graphic Design, Typography, Scenography, Construction Detail, Building Restoration and Semiotics, just to name a few. It was truly remarkable to discover common threads and distinctions between all of those disciplines. And more importantly, it was holistic. For example, setting the rules of your Composition, applies similarly on so many of those fields. And a know-how to break those rules, goes much beyond, it applies to even more!

Both Architecture and Computation gave me the means to step over, across fields and disciplines, to understand the language of the ‘other side’ . As an approach, it turned out to have incredibly multi-disciplinary results. I was able to bring resources and mediums to the table, conceptualise and build evocative words that they sit between visual art, direction and architecture.

Optics, acoustics, and the intersection of light and sound play a significant role in your work. Can you elaborate on how these elements inspire your artistic process?

While having a theoretical affection for all of these elements way earlier in my life, my time with United Visual Artists was the most crucial towards this. Being able to integrate, control and sequence dynamic mediums like kinetics, optics and acoustics, was absolutely fascinating. The performative nature of those mediums poses some challenges yes, but when done properly, it’s just phenomenal. In some cases, we would immerse the visitors into worlds that pull you in for really extended periods of time. They would find their place, sit and contemplate, ponder, close their eyes, escape. I love giving life to objects via technological means, not just digital, also analog. Or turn a space to a musical instrument. There is something mesmerising when the environment around us performs, we feel like being on stage or in the plot of a movie.

Even now, that I’m mostly making “inanimate” artworks, such as drawing, painting, and sculpture, the dynamics of the form with regards to our perspective or eyesight or natural light, is something elemental for me.

How does the concept of chaos interact with mathematical precision in your work? What draws you to this combination?

I have to admit Chaos is a term that I’m intimidated by. Having read a few things about the study of Mathematics of Chaos, an insanely complicated field of science, it involves number manipulation that is well beyond my capacity. Fun fact, once it was. I still remember the depth of Mathematics for A-levels in Greece. It was so challenging and the exams so difficult. Unfortunately, I remember very little now, if any. It would have been so handy right now!

Anyway, I truly find it difficult to use the word chaos in a mathematical context since. What is happening in Arithmetics is that there is a part of code that introduces a random variable, a deviation or a minute error, if you prefer. Just like a brushstroke is never the same, due to our hand gestures always being ‘slightly’ different. It was always my intention to bring those two together under my practice. I find the quest of finding a balance between hand and ‘machine’ fascinating. Which instances are better by hand and which are better automated.

The "Drawings in Code" series features intricate forms created with code and ink, evoking abstract landscapes and celestial masses. Can you walk us through the process of creating these works? How do you blend mathematical formulas with artistic intuition?

Arithmetics was an umbrella term to refer to several series of works that draw points based on coded numerical operations. The main building block, the proto-element as Kadinsky names it, is the Point. The geometrical Point, without size, without reach, just presence. Applying a basic numerical operations -arithmetic- to millions of them, we get an emergent form. Just like air and water particle displacement does to cloud formations. Over the 4 series presented in the exhibition, the point adopts different characters (formulas), depending . Sometimes a point contains “everything” we know, like a dot on an astronomical simulation that describes an entire galaxy. Other times it represents a small single note of a monumental symphony.

It’s the artistic intent that a medium reveals, Code is not different from other ones. You have to be precise when handling it, you can introduce your ‘manner’, your style. Lately, I went back to hand-drawing and painting, inks mainly with some watercolors. I like this drift of back and forth, using a medium, hand or machine based drawing, where it matches the case, the idea.

Can you tell us about your solo exhibition, ARITHMETICS, at Willoughby Gerrish in London? What can visitors expect from this exhibition, and how does it reflect your artistic evolution?

As I mentioned, I’m working already on the next phase, which is a lot more hand/manual based work. I’d love for visitors to see Arithmetics as a procedural part of a larger body, something that in the end always end up working towards: world-building. Regardless if i used scenography, architecture, ink, watercolor, code or marble, the common thread was to reach the ‘other’, a part of a world beyond the perceivable ours.

As you observe them closely, the works in Arithmetics pull you in. The mulptiplicity and intricacy of the point arrangements make our eyesight drift across the surface continuously. They describe spaces or times (music) that are not our normal visual stimuli. They question Form, Geometry and Perception. Even History and Literature, but I will leave that for the next time.

What is a dream project you’d like to make one day?

A monument, taken from a sci-fi scenario. Don’t know who, where or even why yet. One of my most favorite concepts we developed and executed in the past, was High Arctic exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London. There, we envisioned the exhibition as taking place a hundred years from now, when High Arctic doesn’t exist anymore and the only thing left of it, was a monument, set like a Japanese cemetery with labels for every glacier that ever existed (actually, they have/had names). Each visitor was given a UV torch which revealed parts of the history of the region. The emotional impact that had on the visitors, while not being ‘preaching’ per se, was extraordinary. To see something as being lost already, it’s a very evocative feeling.

What is a fun fact about you?

I’m a human version of a computer bug. I break things all the time. Ask around.

What would we most probably find you doing if not creating art?

Currently, I’m spending a good portion of my time as a consultant. It is so interesting to be involved in all these projects/developments of inconceivable scope and scale, like the MSG Sphere in Vegas where I worked with the executive team and before that, in the design phase with the architects and the design group. If time and opportunity allow in the future, i will always try to allocate some focus to these ventures. Other than that, I’m reading (very long) fantasy or sci-fi series.