Humanity has been trying to put its finger on a commonly accepted definition of art for millennia. Is it the aesthetically pleasing juxtaposition of textures, shapes and colours? Is it the play on light? Is it the spark in imagination or the build up of emotion when its experienced with one or more of the senses?

几千年来，人类一直试图将矛头放在一个普遍接受的艺术定义上。它是纹理，形状和颜色的美学并置吗?是光的玩法吗?是想象力中的火花，还是当用一种或多种感官体验时情感的积累?

What everyone seems to be agreeing on is that art is supposed to make you feel something, to make you think, to make you question. Art takes you on a journey and changes you. The most impactful works of art have been so well-timed in their respective eras, that they are rendered timeless.

每个人似乎都同意的是，艺术应该让你感觉到一些东西，让你思考，让你质疑。艺术带你踏上旅程，改变你。最具影响力的艺术作品在各自的时代都非常适时，以至于它们被渲染得永恒。

In many ways, multidisciplinary artist Konstantin Dimopoulos, tries to impact his surroundings by reinterpreting them and at the same time leaving a lot to the imagination. His practice brings attention to the present to raise awareness for the future, incorporating sculpture, installation, performance painting, printing and drawing in the creation of monumental imagery, social and environmental interventions and conceptual proposals that argue the potential of “art” as a means of social engagement and change.

在许多方面，多学科艺术家康斯坦丁·迪莫普洛斯试图通过重新诠释它们来影响他的周围环境，同时留下很多东西来想象。他的实践将注意力带到现在，以提高对未来的认识，将雕塑、装置、表演绘画、印刷和绘画纳入纪念性图像、社会和环境干预以及概念性建议中的创作，这些提案论证了“艺术”作为社会参与和变革手段的潜力。

“As an artist, I would love to think that art was the light of the world…,” he tells me. “It sounds good, but in reality, we as artists are merely the ‘Cracks’ that allow the light to come through, that allows in this instance the science, that you bring the facts -not the alternate facts, not the lies – but the real facts about the ecocide and what’s happening to forests and in a small way try to make this to become visible.”

“作为一名艺术家，我很乐意认为艺术是世界的光......”他告诉我。“这听起来不错，但实际上，我们作为艺术家只是‘裂缝'，允许光线通过，在这种情况下允许科学，你带来事实 - 不是替代事实，不是谎言 - 而是关于生态灭绝的真实事实以及森林正在发生的事情，并以一种小的方式试图让它变得可见。”

The medium he uses often depends on the initial, the intention. As a social artist, he creates works that relate to a variety of issues he feels need to be addressed.

他使用的媒介通常取决于初始意图。作为一名社会艺术家，他创作的作品与他认为需要解决的各种问题有关。

Dimopoulos taps into homelessness in his ‘Purple Rain’ installation, domestic violence in ‘Paradise lost’, and into the human impact on the planet- called ‘Level 4 /works from a savage garden’.

迪莫普洛斯在他的“紫雨”装置中利用了无家可归者，在“失去的天堂”中利用了家庭暴力，并触及了人类对地球的影响 - 称为“4级/来自野蛮花园的作品”。

“For ‘Level 4’, I used gorse, a plant which I brought into the museum walls, that grows like a weed in New Zealand and is very hard to destroy. And related the viral nature of the plant to our own viral status,” he explains.

“对于‘4级'，我使用了Gorse，一种我带入博物馆墙壁的植物，在新西兰像杂草一样生长，很难摧毁。并将植物的病毒性质与我们自己的病毒状态联系起来，“他解释说。

Dimopoulos quotes David Attenborough, who described us as “the worst virus, plague on the planet”.

迪莫普洛斯引用了大卫·阿滕伯勒的话，他将我们描述为“地球上最严重的病毒，瘟疫”。

Born in Port Said, Egypt to Greek parents he grew up at the mouth of the Suez Canal until the age of eight, when the family moved to Wellington, New Zealand. Early on, his paintings and prints explored the human condition through the prism of his experiences. From installations and collections of works exhibited in galleries and museums for decades, he chose to step into the brutalism of public domain.

他出生在埃及塞得港，父母是希腊人，他在苏伊士运河口长大，直到八岁时全家搬到新西兰惠灵顿。早期，他的绘画和版画通过他经历的棱镜探索了人类的状况。从几十年来在画廊和博物馆展出的装置和作品集来看，他选择进入公有领域的野蛮主义。

“Public art, it is not an easy arena to work in,” he stresses, before describing it as the “Hurt Locker of the art department” because it has the tendency to explode from the varied opinions of the public.

“公共艺术，它不是一个容易工作的舞台，”他强调，然后将其描述为“艺术部门的伤害储物柜”，因为它有从公众的各种意见中爆发的趋势。

“Ultimately, I believe that public art is not so much about understanding what the individual works mean, but more that the society in which it resides is one that is open to creation, open to wonderment, open to mystery. Public sculpture and architecture are the face of a community; a society that is strong and certain about its own identity, willing to embrace diversity. And failure? I have seen virus; the blue trees and purple rain evolve.”

“最终，我相信公共艺术与其说是理解个人作品的含义，不如说是公共艺术所处的社会是对创作开放、对惊奇和神秘开放的社会。公共雕塑和建筑是社区的面孔；一个强大而确定自己的身份的社会，愿意拥抱多样性。而失败呢?我见过病毒；蓝色的树木和紫色的雨水进化了。”

The Blue Trees, an “ongoing environmental art intervention”—in some 20 cities on 50 different sites around the world. From Vancouver to Sydney to Germany and around the USA. Dimopoulos has colored the trunks and branches of living trees in parks and urban settings with a harmless vibrant blue watercolor that captures viewers’ attention, compelling them to pause and reflect upon a landscape they may have overlooked for years. Photo: Nikki To/City of Sydney（蓝树，一个“持续的环境艺术干预” - 在全球50个不同地点的约20个城市。从温哥华到悉尼，再到德国和美国各地。Dimopoulos用无害的充满活力的蓝色水彩为公园和城市环境中活树的树干和树枝着色，吸引了观众的注意力，迫使他们停下来反思他们可能被忽视多年的景观。照片：尼基·托/悉尼市）

Dimopoulos, speaks in metaphors, riddles, and pauses. He weaves them all into his spoken narrative, almost as an extension of his physical artworks.

迪莫普洛斯，用隐喻，谜语和停顿说话。他把它们都编织到他的口语叙事中，几乎作为他身体艺术品的延伸。

“No man is an Island, we are all part of the continent part of the main…” he says. “The forests have become a metaphor for our continual disregard of the importance of the natural world and to the destruction of our mental and physical health. By destroying the forests, we have opened up the Pandora’s box of viruses.”

“没有人是一座孤岛，我们都是大陆的一部分，是主要的一部分......”他说。“森林已经成为我们不断无视自然世界重要性和破坏我们身心健康的隐喻。通过摧毁森林，我们打开了潘多拉的病毒盒子。”

Covid has changed both the social and environmental landscape that we once took for granted, he highlights, showing how interconnected we are as a species to each other and to our environment.

他强调，Covid改变了我们曾经认为理所当然的社会和环境景观，展示了我们作为一个物种与彼此和环境的相互联系。

“Breathing became an exercise in survival. My art practice therefore has not so much developed, but more it has had time to review itself. I have come to appreciate, is the very act of breathing and how trees are so important to that process. Death became much more a part of our everyday lives like never before, where the number of dead, was read out on the news every morning, No names just numbers like a trumpet call to the living. Ten, fifteen, twenty… we we’re fixated by numbers.”

“呼吸成了一种生存练习。因此，我的艺术实践并没有那么大的发展，但更多的是它有时间重新审视自己。我开始体会到，呼吸的行为以及树木如何对这一过程如此重要。死亡比以往任何时候都更加成为我们日常生活的一部分，每天早上在新闻上都会读到死亡人数，没有名字只是像小号一样对活着的人打电话。十、十五、二十...我们被数字所束缚。”

The Purple Rain, a 2015 public art installation in Melbourne, Australia, created to generate greater visibility and empathy for people who have experienced homelessness. With vibrant purple dots, passersby are compelled to stop, move closer, and explore one dot and then the next, like a path within the installation as a whole. Through information printed on those dots, accompanied by QR codes, viewers take the time to learn about one homeless individual after another. Photo: Supplied（《紫雨》是2015年在澳大利亚墨尔本举行的公共艺术装置，旨在为无家可归者带来更大的知名度和同理心。有了充满活力的紫色圆点，路人被迫停下来，走近，探索一个点，然后探索下一个点，就像整个装置中的一条路径。通过印在这些点上的信息，并附上QR码，观众花时间了解一个又一个无家可归的人。照片由艺术家提供）

For Dimopoulos, ideas for artworks often come from creating or being in certain environments. For instance, the ‘Blue Trees’ was created after moving from New Zealand to Melbourne. Melbourne has one of the largest urban forests in the world whereas Wellington, where Dimopoulos grew up has few trees. Seeing the urban forest began the process for his installation. While recreating it in Seattle, there were hundreds of homeless people living outside, near the trees, spread out like trees.

对于迪莫普洛斯来说，艺术品的想法通常来自创作或处于某些环境中。例如，“蓝树”是从新西兰搬到墨尔本后创建的。墨尔本拥有世界上最大的城市森林之一，而迪莫普洛斯长大的惠灵顿的树木很少。看到城市森林开始了他的装置过程。在西雅图重建它时，有数百名无家可归的人住在外面，靠近树木，像树木一样散开。

“My time spent with them and them (the homeless) helping me with the blue trees led to the creation of ‘The Purple Rain’,” he explains. “While living in New York, the amount of rubbish in the streets… I began working on creating ‘Black Pyramid’, which created black rubbish bags of rubbish in a pyramid shape.

“我花时间与他们和他们(无家可归者)一起帮助我处理蓝色树木，导致了‘紫雨'的创作。”他解释说，“在纽约生活时，街上的垃圾数量......我开始致力于创建‘黑色金字塔’，它创造了金字塔形状的黑色垃圾袋。”

“One idea often leads to another but the critical part is living in a particular city or environment opens the way to create new works. In Wellington the wind was a critical part so I created wind sculptures. ‘Pacific Grass’ is a moving sculpture outside Wellington airport.”

“一个想法往往会导致另一个想法，但关键的部分是生活在特定的城市或环境中为创作新作品开辟了道路。在惠灵顿，风是一个关键部分，所以我创作了风雕塑。‘太平洋草地'是惠灵顿机场外的一座动人雕塑。”

The art, for Dimopoulos, is to bring forward ideas or issues that interest him and transmit them in the hope that others will process them in a new perspective.

对于迪莫普洛斯来说，艺术是提出他感兴趣的想法或问题，并将它们传播出去，希望其他人能以新的角度处理它们。

“These concepts are not in themselves methods of dealing or fixing deforestation or homelessness,” he stresses. I hope that by bringing them to the forefront it will make people review their own way of looking at these and perhaps through empathy, I can move them to help.”

“这些概念本身并不是处理或解决森林砍伐或无家可归的方法，”他强调说。我希望通过把它们带到最前沿，让人们重新审视自己看待这些的方式，也许通过同理心，我可以推动他们提供帮助。

Be it a virus, deforestation, climate change, homelessness or war, it is in the darkest of times historically that art finds a way to break through the darkness and bring light and colour to the world.

无论是病毒、森林砍伐、气候变化、无家可归还是战争，艺术都在历史上最黑暗的时代找到了突破黑暗，为世界带来光明和色彩的方法。

Dimopoulos’ artwork for the book L’artiste et le vivant by Valérie Belmokhtar in France, available in bookstores on October 20. Photo: Supplied（迪莫普洛斯在法国为瓦莱丽·贝尔莫赫塔尔的《艺术家与生活》一书创作的艺术作品，于10月20日在书店有售。照片由艺术家提供）

“In a kind of bizarre way, I started to look at how to use colour to make these disappearing forests visible and bring their voice into the urban environment. Colour moves us to a variety of emotions. It is a great antidote to greyness and inertia and dull acceptance. Colour is an incredible powerful stimulant. The fact that blue is a colour that is not naturally identified with trees suggests to people that something unusual, something out of the ordinary has happened. For me, blue suggests sacredness, breathlessness and mystery.”

“以一种奇怪的方式，我开始研究如何利用颜色使这些消失的森林可见，并将它们的声音带入城市环境。颜色将我们推向各种情感。它是灰色、惰性和沉闷的接受度的伟大解药。颜色是一种令人难以置信的强大兴奋剂。事实上，蓝色是一种不自然地与树木相识别的颜色，这向人们表明，发生了一些不寻常的事情，一些不寻常的事情。对我来说，蓝色意味着神圣、气喘吁吁和神秘。”

Dimopoulos argues that we must stop talking as though only masterpieces matter. That art is needed in all its diverse faces, just like nature is. Art has always been an integral part of his genetic makeup, a way with which he discovers himself, a vehicle that tries to bring into view the invisible – whether its Michelangelo making God visible in the Sistine Chapel, Picasso showing us the bombing and deaths in Guernica or Goya and the dark prints of war, superstition, and personal violence that have found resonance time and time again.

迪莫普洛斯认为，我们必须停止谈论，好像只有杰作才重要。这种艺术在其所有不同的方面都是需要的，就像自然一样。艺术一直是他基因构成中不可或缺的一部分，是他发现自己的一种方式，一种试图将无形事物带入视野的载体 - 无论是米开朗基罗在西斯廷教堂中使上帝可见，毕加索向我们展示格尔尼卡或戈雅的轰炸和死亡以及战争，迷信的黑暗印记， 以及一次又一次地引起共鸣的个人暴力。

The best quote that reflects how Dimopoulos feels that art helps to break through limitations is: “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. Each time we stand up for an ideal, or act to improve the lot of others, or strike out against injustice, we send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls.”

反映迪莫普洛斯认为艺术有助于突破限制的最好一句话是：“很少有人会伟大地弯曲历史本身，但我们每个人都可以努力改变一小部分事件。每当我们为一个理想挺身而出，或者采取行动改善他人的命运，或者打击不公正时，我们都会发出一个小小的希望涟漪，从一百万个不同的能量中心相互交叉，大胆地这些涟漪形成一股可以扫除最强大墙壁的潮流。”

He saw the ripple of growing and moving from cities, to communities, to schools, and individuals expand from his “small contribution”.

他看到了从城市，到社区，再到学校，个人从他的“小贡献”中成长和移动的涟漪。

Eden Must Be Destroyed. Photo: Supplied（伊甸园必须被摧毁。照片由艺术家提供）

“It’s been an exciting time in terms of art for me at the moment,” he tells Neos Kosmos as he parallels his journey to the one of archetype of the Phoenix.

“就艺术而言，目前对我来说，这是一个激动人心的时刻。”他告诉Neos Kosmos，因为他将自己的旅程与凤凰城的原型之一相提并论。

“I have been invited to create the ‘Blue Trees’ as part of the environmental call to action at Bibliotheca degli Alberi, Milan, Italy. The cultural program of 2023 will be based on a simple but powerful theme: the colour.”

“我被邀请创建‘蓝树'，作为意大利米兰阿尔贝里图书馆环境行动呼吁的一部分。2023年的文化节目将基于一个简单而强大的主题：颜色。”

After three years that for the most part felt like a plateau, Dimopoulos will then return to the US to create his famous Blue Trees in Memphis, followed by a residency at the Lawton Gallery, University of Wisconsin. Currently, he is completing a major public art sculptural installation for The Howard Hughes Corporation in Houston Texas called ‘Rising Knoll’.

三年后，大部分时间都感觉像一个高原，迪莫普洛斯将回到美国，在孟菲斯创作他着名的蓝树，然后在威斯康星大学劳顿画廊(Lawton Gallery)驻留。目前，他正在为德克萨斯州休斯顿的霍华德休斯公司完成一个名为“Rising Knoll”的大型公共艺术雕塑装置。

“Due to a lot of my public art was postponed during the pandemic, I started to look at other mediums like digital art and augmented reality (AR). One of the concepts was a commission from the Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx titled ‘Eden must be Destroyed’.

“由于我的许多公共艺术在大流行期间被推迟，我开始关注其他媒体，如数字艺术和增强现实(AR)。其中一个概念是布朗克斯区蒙特菲奥里医院的一份名为‘伊甸园必须被摧毁’的委托。”

“There is a sense here that we have broken our covenant with Nature – and activated ‘our fall’ and subsequently our expulsion from the Garden of Eden,” Dimopoulos explains.

“这里有一种感觉，我们已经打破了与自然的盟约 - 并激活了'我们的堕落'，随后我们将他们驱逐出伊甸园。”迪莫普洛斯解释说。

In the work the figures walk out from the frame and into the foreground.

在工作中，人物从框架中走出来，进入前景。

Beyond Good and Evil. Photo: Supplied（超越善恶。照片由艺术家提供）

Another large sculptural work of his ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, will grace the Prancing Horse Estate, in Mornington Peninsula. A project realised with the support of Tony and Cathie Hancy -two major philanthropists in the arts- and Heide Museum of Modern Art. With its reference to Hitchcock’s psychological thriller ‘The Birds’, Dimopoulos’ Beyond Good and Evil’ explores the narrative of people’s memory and anxiety.

他的另一幅大型雕塑作品“超越善恶”将出现在莫宁顿半岛的跃马庄园。该项目是在托尼和凯茜·汉西(两位主要的艺术慈善家)和海德现代艺术博物馆的支持下实现的。迪莫普洛斯的《超越善恶》参考了希区柯克的心理惊悚片《鸟儿》，探索了人们对记忆和焦虑的叙述。

“Our remembering of past images often leaves marks in our psyche. These marks are explored here through a sculpture that brings out a collective memory that has been exploited for centuries through film and fiction. ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ explores how these marks create emotions that become a part of our reality.”

“我们对过去图像的记忆经常在我们的心灵中留下痕迹。这些标记在这里通过雕塑进行探索，该雕塑带出了几个世纪以来通过电影和小说被利用的集体记忆。《超越善与恶》探讨了这些标记如何创造情感，成为我们现实的一部分。”

The prolific artist is also preparing a new series of neon works, prints and paintings, to be shown at the Metro Gallery, in Melbourne, while also submitting a painting for the Archibald Prize. Yet, his return from 2020’s enforced hiatus does not stop there.

这位多产的艺术家还在准备一系列新的霓虹灯作品，版画和绘画，将在墨尔本的地铁画廊展出，同时也为阿奇博尔德奖提交了一幅画作。然而，他从2020年的强制中断中回归并不止于此。

Dimopoulos continues to pursue the return of the Parthenon Marbles hoping to ignite not only the Greek Community’s but also the global community’s support.

迪莫普洛斯继续追求帕台农神庙大理石的回归，希望不仅能点燃希腊社区的支持，还能点燃国际社会的支持。

“The global work is called ‘Black Parthenon’ which relates to his 2009 ‘Light Work’ created in Melbourne. We are going to look at shrouding major landmarks around the world using black material, that reflects the lamentation around the marbles, and that will lend support by major cities to the return of the marbles that were stolen from Athens.”

“这件全球作品被称为'黑色帕台农神庙'，这与他2009年在墨尔本创作的'轻工'有关。我们将使用黑色材料来观察世界各地笼罩的主要地标，这反映了大理石周围的哀歌，并将为主要城市从雅典被盗的大理石的归还提供支持。”

“These would include Chicago and Melbourne who are the third and fourth largest Greek cities outside of Greece. There has been great support for the return from around the world including Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens and Amal and George Clooney. If nature doesn’t throw another spun in the works, I will keep pushing through with all these projects.”

“这些将包括芝加哥和墨尔本，它们是希腊以外的第三和第四大希腊城市。来自世界各地的回归得到了极大的支持，包括斯蒂芬·弗莱，克里斯托弗·希钦斯，阿迈勒和乔治克鲁尼。如果大自然不投入另一个旋转工程，我将继续推进所有这些项目。”

The Black Parthenon idea. Photo: Supplied（黑色帕台农神庙的想法。照片由艺术家提供）