Conventions

Marios Spiliopoulos

16 December - 29 February of 2024 Trikala TEXT BY Marios Spiliopoulos

The healer of the cross,
mixed media,
35 x 45 cm

“Behold, I will undercut the inhabitants of this land in affliction, as thy pestilence is fulfilled;” -Jeremiah 10:18

Crosses on the forehead,
mixed media,
35 x 45 cm

Wars are the great events of history.

They are the events that define historical moments.

In the “war plans” that began in 2003 with the second Gulf War, which ended with the capture and hanging of Saddam Hussein, my narrative is diverted to the nightmare of brute force.

War plan Ι,
Lightbox - monotype,
77 x 60 cm

Drawn in red ink, these drawings are torturous, naked, wild, without embellishments, bones and fleshy rags.

Like a comic strip of naked life, a peculiar memento mori, where everyone feels “shock and awe” in the face of the uncontrolled violence of terrorism and the death spread by war.

And the horrors of war continue, they insist.

War plan IΙ,
Lightbox - monotype,
77 x 60 cm

In 2014 with the Crimean war, which last year led to the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, a war that continues to leave behind piles of rubble, dead civilians under the light of television crews.

Today, the spotlight has turned to the massacre of young people in the Israeli desert by Hamas and the attack on the kibbutz on 7 November 2023, which provoked the merciless bombing of Gaza as a retaliation.

The 4 bright boxes with the bloody drawings are the frozen images of the television horror that continues to enter our homes, where we the viewers are reflected on their glossy surface, as if in front of a switched off TV screen.

War plan IIΙ,
Lightbox - monotype,
77 x 60 cm

These major events disrupt our daily lives, plunge us into uncertainty and bring nightmares in our sleep.

The 5 blue light boxes are the drawings from the dreams I had after my father's death, dreams that upset me and I named them “Nightmares”.

The “war plans” and the “Nightmares” are subcutaneously united by death.

Simultaneously, everyday and ephemeral events are recorded in “Dazibao”, a work that was presented in January 2020 and continues to this day.

The word “Dazibao” comes from the Chinese word which means wall newspaper.

Crucifixion,
mixed media,
32 x 27 cm

Starting from the process of selecting the pages of the newspapers, I realized that many of the everyday events were not inferior in brutality to those of the war, while at the same time, with the many incongruous and contradictory themes coexisting on the same page, along with the tragedy, the ridiculousness, the futility, the irony, all of which I wanted to bring to the surface by intervening in my handmade newspapers.

Fragrance of ice (Rimbau-Sebald),
mixed media,
56 x 45 cm

Just like the fourteen-year-old young telegram deliverer in The Human Comedy, the profoundly humanist and anti-war book by William Saroyan, so my own teenage cyclist, in the light box, The Age of Innocence, passes through the calamities of war, the oddities and passions of everyday life, unscathed, protected by the aura of innocence of his age, giving meaning to everyday life, illuminating the fleeting and the unseen.

Planet B,
mixed media,
41 x 43 cm

“War plans”, “Nightmares”, “Dazibao” handmade newspapers and even “The Age of Innocence” have a common thread.

It is about events that directly or indirectly affect our lives, with the ability to abolish linear time, so that the “war plans” of 2003 speak of the current wars, the “Nightmares” re-emerge and the headlines of the “Dazibao”, Handmade Newspapers, repeat a perpetual reality. I record all this in my personal timeless yet enduring Book of Events.

Marios Spiliopoulos November, 2023