( in my art, parentheses are more than punctuation—they are tools for shaping contradiction and experience. You’ll find them not just in my writing, but in visual and spatial ways across different media, including sculpture, photography, and materials like the sky in my uranosculptures. My parenthesis becomes a form that holds space, marks what is uncertain, and invites reflection.
Traditionally, parentheses are used in language to add extra information—something outside the main sentence. In my work -even in my name- they do something similar: they mark thoughts, feelings, or images that are not yet fully formed or understood. Instead of finishing a story or making a clear point, the parenthesis opens a pause. It allows something to be shown, but not fully explained. This invites the viewer to sit with uncertainty, a kind of catastrophe -opposite to creation.
I’m using parentheses as physical shapes and gestures. In sculptures or installations, curves that resemble parentheses may be used to frame space or suggest a boundary. These forms can highlight what is missing or invisible, such as air, light, or silence… In this way, the parenthesis becomes a kind of structure that shapes the way we see and feel what is in front of us.
Many of my works explore themes of memory, loss, and change. In these contexts, the parenthesis acts like a gentle bracket around something fragile—an image, a sound, or a material that could disappear. It holds space for things that are not yet healed, remembered, or resolved. The parenthesis becomes a quiet sign of care and attention, a way to say: “this matters, even if we don’t yet know how.”
My use of parentheses also creates a space between clear ideas. It allows two or more thoughts to exist at the same time, even if they seem to conflict. These works you see in my solo exhibition Vira(l) Fragilities do not aim to give answers or close meaning. Instead, they offer places to pause and reflect. In this way, the parenthesis becomes a poetic and political gesture—one that values slowness, complexity, and open-ended thinking a subtle but powerful form of expression )
BIO
Professor Ioannis Michalou(di)s is a visual artist, researcher and academic, internationally acknowledged as a leader in Art & Science, and the first researcher worldwide to apply the ethereal NASA’s nanomaterial silica aerogel in visual arts and design.
His career began in Paris, at Sorbonne University, where he presented his thesis on Visual Arts in 1998. After receiving a “Greek Artists” Fulbright Award in 2001, he undertook research on art and nanotechnology at MIT where he started his research on the application of the silica aerogel in visual arts. He has been a Fellow by Onassis Foundation and is also a Research Associate at the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the National Center for Scientific Research “Democritus” in Greece. Since October 2020 he is the Founding Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at the American University of Cyprus (AUCY) in Larnaca.
Moreover, he has authored twenty-two research papers, two book chapters and a book and is currently working on several projects regarding art and science. As of now, he has had twelve solo international exhibitions and has been invited in more than twenty international Art & Science exhibitions and conferences. His latest group exhibition was at the Venice Glass Week festival (September 14-22, 2024) where he collaborated with Simone Crestani to produce artworks made of glass and silica aerogel for their artistic project called SOS: Save our Sky. Their artworks are now exhibited at the concept store of the fashion house Dries Van Noten, in New York.
An astonishing achievement, among others, of Prof. Michalou(di)s is that at the end of 2025, two of his silica aerogel aer( )sculptures will be rocketed to the moon and exist there for billions of years.
