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| Leonidas Papadopoulos The enlargement of objects and forms in painting and sculpture is a common practice that has existed at least ever since the 20th century. Both in Surrealism as well as in Pop Art, there were artists who presented excessively large everyday objects in seeking to generate an unfamiliar and uncanny atmosphere or simply make a direct comment on advertising, television and road posters. The change in the scale and size of forms, which would otherwise be regarded as familiar everyday objects, obviously alters our perception of such forms and eventually shapes our feelings towards them accordingly. Through his sculpted objects, but mainly through the large-sized police caps he usually presents, in conjunction with other creations made from rubber, polyester and metal, Leonidas Papadopoulos alters the size scale of a familiar “hat”, thus adding authoritative, violent and dangerous dimensions to this particular symbol of legal order and state authority. He uses caps as individual entities, as individual components of a broader structure; or like theatre seats or caps suspended on conveyor belts or even placed on the wall alongside a small ladder that leads to them, just like in the work of the exhibition. A retractable iron ladder, like the ones often used by workers at building sites or anyone undertaking manual work, folded so that no one may access it, leads to a police cap, which is not black this time, like all the rest, but almost white. While creations with ladders and caps up until now used to present an overall image of the work that was strictly clear and dreadfully polished, in this particular work there is dust and dirt. The black ladder used in the previous works, unfolded in front of viewers, has now been replaced by a dirty metallic folded and retracted one. The ladder, a symbol of Paradise (?) but at the same time a powerful manifestation of social prestige and growth, leads to an oversized symbol of state suppression; the artist criticizes and mocks both the cliché images of art itself and the cliché symbols of everyday family, civil and state – induced violence. Theodore Markoglou  Download CV |  Untitled |
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