George Anastasios Magalios

George Anastasios Magalios writes art theoretical works and art reviews of contemporary and modern art issues. He is a student of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean Baudrillard and he incorporates much of the ideas of these thinkers in both his art and his writings. He has presented papers and the College Art Association conference in New York (2007) and at the Subtle Technologies Conference in Toronto (2002).

After receiving his master's degree Magalios moved to New York in 1998 to pursue a PhD in cultural theory at the New School for Social Research. He dropped out during the first day of classes after experiencing an epiphany on the streets of Greenwich Village. The vision was one of a life of art-making instead of a life of teaching and writing about art. It would prove to be a life-altering moment that allowed Magalios to fully embrace the art practice fully as a way of life rather than a way of theory.

In 1998 George A. Magalios began studies in the MFA program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art, upon a recommendation from Arthur Kroker, a former professor at Concordia University. While at Carnegie Mellon he met Bill Kofmehl and began a series of performance and installation works that explored concepts such as hunting, nature, and technology's influence on perception.

New York would also prove to be an important home for George Magalios as he often mentions the importance of seeing so many important exhibitions and works by his heroes first hand. The Robert Rauschenberg retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1997 and the Matisse collection at the Museum of Modern art are two examples frequently cited as poignant discoveries.

In 1993 George Magalios enrolled in the Master's program of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Department at San Francisco State University. He would write his thesis on the views of art and technology held by Joseph Beuys and Martin Heidegger. The thesis, entitled "Site-Specific Philosophy", was an attempt to craft a philosophical way of thinking and living using the paradigms of installation-based sculpture. The thesis was well received and continues to be a foundation for much of the artist's writings.

In 1992 Magalios moved to San Francisco and was instantly influenced by the dramatic landscapes of the Pacific Coast and the Sierra Nevada, as well as by the atmosphere of kindness, friendship, and creativity in the Bay area. During this period he devoted himself almost exclusively to a series of guerilla site-specific installation works in both rural and urban settings. The works were often ephemeral in nature and largely influenced by artists such as Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. He also continued experimenting with a series of paintings on cardboard and canvas that explored a minimal use of painterly brush strokes in the earth colors of the ground palette.

In 1991 Magalios began site-specific installations that consisted of assemblages of street trash from his Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood. The assemblages would take the form of traditional Hindu Siva-Sakti lingam sculptures. This return to sculpture was inspired, in part, by a sense of existential homecoming the artist felt after living away from Montreal for 15 years. It was during the same year that the artist returned to complete his bachelor's degree at Concordia University. While there he was introduced to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean Baudrillard, two thinkers who would play a strong role in forming Magalios's vision of the world that combined a penchant for a critical approach to perception and politics with an affirmation of the light and darkness of living.

In 1990, Magalios painted the first, of what would continue to be his most important series of Autumn-themed paintings. The work was a red-orange series of "leaves" on multiple 2x4 studs of wood that were individually screwed into a wall to become both a sculptural and painterly work.

In 1988, while still at the University of Florida, Magalios decided to move back to his native Montreal and take a year-long break from studies. Arriving in 1989 Magalios began a series of black and white semi-figurative paintings on masonite panels and ink drawings on paper. None of the paintings are believed to be still in existence as the artist has never mentioned them in any of his lists of works.

Magalios was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. When Magalios was six years-old in 1973 he built a cave out of a mountain of snow in his backyard. This experience is considered by the artist to be a formative one and he has since called the work "Snow Womb" and has listed it in various biographies and lists of exhibitions. The artist remembers Montreal winters as being wombs of white and cold comforted by his mother's cooking and his visits to various Greek relatives. Raised in a Greek household, the artist grew up to speak English, Greek, and French and the cosmopolitan cultural environment proved to be a major influence on the artist's political and cultural outlook.

George Anastasios Magalios (born in 1967) is a contemporary artist and philosopher, and the founder of George Magalios Studios. Magalios is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who makes works in fields such as painting, photography, sculpture, and performance art. Magalios is an unusual artist because of his use of unique names and identities for each body of work: George Magalios (The Fall Line painting series), Georges Ducharme (sculpture and installation art), Will Swinburne (performance art), Giorgio Fati (photography), and Jorge Griego (Energy Plan for the Florida Man painting series).