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In all his artistic practice, Spyros Aggelopoulos is resorting to laughter, or rather to the desire for laughter. For his second show at Dio Horia Gallery, Aggelopoulos exhibits his 'dirty laundry' to present every antihero’s secret power: The attack on the smile-less.
The exhibition titled 'Δε Laundry Basket' [The Laundry Basket], includes new paintings, sculptural installations and an experimental silent movie that as a whole construct the artist’s universe as a trooper. Starring in 'Δε Laundry Basket’s' iconography is a table, the Head in a jar, evoking references to old freak shows that invited people to see the head of Joaquin Murrieta or Emiliano Zapata. Out and about are Batman driving a truck filled with watermelons; Wonder Woman; the Siamese Twin Pac-Man and the Ghost; the children’s series heroine Candy Candy, only without legs and titled Half a Candy is still a Candy. Appearing at the same time are performers, actors, amateurs, presenting those acts that used to be called side shows or “fireworks” in older freak shows.
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“Painting comes as a construction. I am presenting a performance, which also includes video. At some point I realized that all of these are essentially one and the same: some strange people with superpowers, or with super-flaws that they’ve turned into powers. And because I was never satisfied with painting alone, simply sitting in front of a framed canvas, I wanted to create a super-universe. Essentially, as I see it now, these superpowers are the super-flaws that freaks possess. That is, the very qualities due to which society pushes you to the margins”.
-Spyros Aggelopoulos, Artist
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SPYROS AGGELOPOULOS
NO NEWS TODAY, 2021 -
SPYROS AGGELOPOULOS
BATSUN, 2021
The 'Δε Laundry Basket' exhibition, resembles a freak show modeled after a carnivalesque fête d’hiver. The exhibition represents a ritualistic carnival festivity, featuring celebrities, midgets, various monsters, talking animals and a host of other creatures, figments of imagination that make up a spectacular motley world amidst laughs and curses and outrageous rebukes and insults. Aggelopoulos’s intention is to highlight the misshapen, the paradoxical and the exaggerated; the grotesque. That which is disturbing to the eye, precisely because, as a “monster”, it encapsulates all “possible micro-anomalies” that unfold through the games nature plays.
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“Aggelopoulos blends reality with imagination. He brings together a wide range of techniques and practices of differentiation and deviation, paying attention to construction, repair and ad hoc solutions, adding theatrical scenery to his toolbox. Life and its contradictions become a stage. And vice versa – the stage featuring all these forms of otherness and strangeness becomes life. It is life”.
-Efie Falida, Art & Culture Writer
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Aggelopoulos’s goal is to create an artistic freak show, through which we can salvage the sort of laughter that functions subversively. The sort of laughter that preserves the memory of the carnival, the country fair, the folk whimsy, the Karagiozis puppeteer, the traveling actors and musicians, the hawkers and peddlers, the town square, the sorcerer, the fortune teller, and all things folk culture. To this end, Aggelopoulos calls on his associates without providing them with any clear directorial guidelines, but simply conveying to them a feeling, an atmosphere, so that they may express themselves freely and creatively, in a celebratory mood. And this attitude is also extended towards the viewer of his works.
Artist Spyros Aggelopoulos brings together the forms of his heroes, presenting the Laundry Basket. With one objective: “To be theatrical without a résumé.” He wants his viewers, the visitors of the exhibition, to see it and embrace their own theatricality. And think to themselves: “Starting tomorrow, I too will be in there, I will be part of what I see.”
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Spyros Aggelopoulos, Half a Candy [crooked], 2021View more details
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Spyros Aggelopoulos, Jeff Koons Transports, 2021View more details
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Spyros Aggelopoulos, California Packman, 2021View more details
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Spyros Aggelopoulos, Jerry Saltz Gypsy Priest, 2021View more details
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Spyros Aggelopoulos (b.1979, Greece) is a Greek visual artist, actor and make-up artist. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts and the Arts Academy in Venice and Studio4, in Los Angeles. In his work he revisits the tradition of Greek shadow-puppet theatre to create functional artworks depicting pop-culture figures from film, literature, politics, art history and sports. In all his artistic practice, Aggelopoulos blends reality with imagination. He brings together a wide range of techniques and practices of differentiation and deviation, paying attention to construction, repair and ad hoc solutions, adding theatrical scenery to his toolbox. Aggelopoulos’s work has been exhibited in, ‘Mind the Fact Festival’, Online, 2020; Friends Non-Show’, Dio Horia Gallery, Athens, 2020; ‘Pai o Palios o Chronos’, Online, 2020; Art Fair EXPO Chicago, Chicago, 2019; Donut Factory; Dio Horia Gallery, Mykonos, 2019; ‘The Weakest Man in the Babylon’, Stoa 42, Athens; 6th Athens Biennal, Athens, 2018; and Aeschylia Festival’, Eleysina, 2017. His work has been presented by ArtForum, Guardian, Chicago Tribune and Art News among other cultural media. He lives and works in Athens, Greece.
SPYROS AGGELOPOULOS - ΔΕ LAUNDRY BASKET: GALLERY EXHIBITION AT DIO HORIA ATHENS
Past viewing_room
![Spyros Aggelopoulos, Half a Candy [crooked], 2021](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/artlogicstorage/diohoria/images/view/25f1b52911d6287201652ab37bf0ff94j/diohoriagallery-spyros-aggelopoulos-half-a-candy-crooked-2021.jpg)
