Dimitris Georgakopoulos
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(Secret Project), 2018
The Flow is an artwork in progress. It was presented in February 2018 as a secret project to a select audience. It is an in situ sculptural gesture in an architecturally specific space, which initially penetrates by imposing its persistent physical presence, then uses it, but finally is determined by it.
A solid wooden structure (the subject) comes out of the wall at floor level, repeats itself in a straight line creating a sense of continuity (flow), makes a sudden turn, continues its course and suddenly slams, without a reason, into the opposite wall.
The space determines the subject’s “fate”, but remains uninvolved as no sign of the crash is visible on it. Its presence interferes with the development of the narrative as some kind of filter that ignores the subject’s existence, as well as its effect on it.
The artist’s interest doesn’t focus on the aesthetic outcome of the disaster only, but mostly on the destruction of the certainty of continuity.
Before beginning the construction of the piece, Dimitris Georgakopoulos invited a group of selected friends to participate. They all stayed together for three days in a space where they would work on the project. Their presence was essential, not merely for constructing the work, but mostly for their relation to it.
This meeting gave birth to a series of discussions about the work’s form, its meaning, its relation to the surrounding space, its interaction with the viewer. During those three days a camera recorded the process, collecting material that shows the creation of a work of art, as well as everything that happens behind the scenes and before the work is presented in its final form.
The expected way in which art is usually presented did not fit here. An open social event in the form of a vernissage was not considered necessary, because without it the viewer is liberated from all forms of clichés that appear in social gatherings and can focus on the one thing they came for – the work of art.
The approach to communicating The Flow was also unorthodox, considering no images of the work were available and no information about the exhibition space was given to the public, making it an entirely secret project. To see it, one had to be personally invited or book an appointment and view the work alone. During the four weeks of February 2018 almost 150 people came one at a time, saw The Flow and personally discussed it with the artist. The only online traces of this project were some comments, sound clips and thoughts written by the people who viewed it.
The friends of the artist who worked and discussed for the construction of The Flow are: George Zamboulakis – theater director, Karolina Aleiferopoulou – art historian, curator, Dimitris Merantzas – visual artist, Babis Karalis – visual artist, Natasa Poulantza – visual artist, Alexander Platis – art historian, curator, Nikos Giavropoulos – video artist, Vasilis Nasis – cultural manager and Theophilos Gerontopoulos – photographer.
The Flow
dimensions variable
Photos by Theofilos Gerontopoulos -
2017
The presented objects belong to a series of “unfortunate approaches” to the work of minimalist artist Donald Judd. The notion of some kind of failure that they seem to imply, derives from the purposeful deconstruction of the very basic principles that run through Judd’s work: the literalist qualities of the object, its simplicity, its insistent physical presence, the industrialized manner of production (associated to Bauhaus). Georgakopoulos’ work re-imagines the emblematic objects, paraphrases and twists them. Here the objects interplay and depend on the works they refer to, they present a narrative and, unlike the spotless factory aesthetic of Judd’s work, they remain products of traditional manual labor.
Broken Judd
140 x 80 x 40 cm -
2015
The installation One And Three Pulpits consists of three versions that derive from the perfect Pulpit (a tool of power and manipulation).The first is the dictionary entry, the second is the model of a pulpit, depicted in an ideal state that, viewed through a mirror, resembles a throne and the third is its actual form in natural size in a state in which it cannot fulfill its purpose.
One And Three Pulpits
dimensions variable -
2004
Ghost City is an interactive installation consisting of 400 wooden pieces. On a strictly designed grid on the floor the pieces are initially placed following the geometrical pattern of the base and then developing as an architectural fungus that distorts the geometry of the construction and takes the form of a metropolis in progress.
During the presentation of the work, the viewers could move or add more pieces, constantly changing it and randomly altering its shape.
The nature of this work’s form is to reconfigure itself through a constant interaction with people, endlessly producing both random and unpredictable images.
Ghost City
dimensions variable
Photos by Guram Chachanidze -
2009
Klutsis Cart is a moving wooden construction with speakers. It is an homage to the 1922 project of constructivist artist Gustav Klutsis, who created a series of semiportable multimedia agitprop kiosks, to be installed in the streets of Moscow for the fifth celebration of the October Revolution.
There is irony here as this reconstructed propaganda cart questions the value of ideology and the role it has as political alibi. There is also skepticism towards the artists that create engaged works for a higher purpose. It seems Klutsis Cart could be a symbol of art created for the wrong reasons, rendering it a Sisyphean boulder that the artist who made it has to drag it for eternity.
Klutsis Cart
70 x 35 x 235 cm
Photos by Guram Chachanidze -
2009
The installation EGO is constituted of three illusional body tools, each of which is a closed system. Their function is to initially place the visitor into a paradox situation and reveal them in the eyes of all, as to secretly trigger a series of undesirable and underlying thoughts related to inspiration, power, death and finally to bring one to confront him/herself.
These body tools, without the presence of their user (the spectator or the subject EGO), may be viewed as a fetish, like the exercising equipment of a gym or the torture equipment in a museum.
The Wheel-throne, internally covered with mirrors, slides an 8 meter distance. The user trapped within may see him/herself through the mirror in multiple images within a space that is expanded by the reflections of mirrors.
The manipulative tool (the Pulpit) triggers illusions of power. Seen in a reversed way, it resembles a gallows.
The Chamber, a space of volunteer isolation, monument to self, is tuned in to monotonous repetitive sounds.
Sound Design: CotiΚ
Installation View -
2006
Doublecross is an installation that consists of three works: “Head on”, “I wish” and “Corridor”, three transportation devices realized in a scale slightly smaller than that of man. The audience cannot actually use them, but can imagine themselves using them, initiating thus a personal narration.
Head on is a vehicle that directs you to a course of predetermined impact.
I wish is a monument to vanity and prayer at the same time. It can be perceived as a chaotic, disorderly system, that shapes a solid and stable repeatable structure which directs upwards, or as a compact column collapsing under its weight and failing to climb higher.
Corridor is an intermediate space, an area of transition, inside which someone can get lost.
All three of these transportation devices acquire their form by the multiplication of an archetypical unit with the shape of a three dimensional cross.
The Corridor
500 x 100 x 235 cm -
2001
Brazil was made for the exhibition Bureaucracy that took place in the Ministry of Domestic Affairs, curated by Olinka Varvitsioti. It is a wooden construction filled with paper folders that escalate from a system of order to a disorderly chaos resembling an explosion. It was installed near the entrance to the Ministry building as some kind of monument not to be touched and it was protected with a separating rope that made it seem even more precious and unreachable.
Brazil
40 x 80 x 235 cm -
1999-2001
The Machine is an installation and performance, conceived and created by Giorgos Georgakopoulos, Dimitris Georgakopoulos and Christos Kechagioglou. It constitutes the very first moving assembly line of artworks, following the model of the first moving assembly line of Ford in 1913.
The Machine is operated by eight volunteer art workers and three supervising artist engineers. Two necessary for its function doctrinal propaganda manifestos are displayed, pointing to the Russian Avant Garde and the Bauhaus Modernism. The first glorifies the constructed art/product and the machine that produces it, by arguing for the democratization of art and its accessibility to all. The second denounces it as industrial garbage of a machine that manufactures propaganda replicas for massive consumption.
During the performance visitors/art consumers witness the linear production of artworks on an industrial workbench, where in approximately 30’’ each piece is ready. The accompanying sound design, created by Nikos Stavropoulos, recreates machine rumblings. Meanwhile, in a specially curated space that resembles a museum exhibition there are two pedestals on which two artworks are displayed, each inside protective glass. On the walls one can see the two contradictory propaganda manifestos, written by Charidina Karaindrou.
The Machine
dimensions variable
