|
Artists Main Programme Parallel Programme Workshop Performance Festival A-Ζ |
| biennale mission biennale shop |
| Hellenic Ministry of Culture
State Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art Visual Arts in Greece Art Editions |
|
|
|
| Vassilis Hatzopoulos One of the most important stages in the development of social consciousness in a person’s life is the period of adolescence and it is accomplished within school. The school setting, functioning as a miniature of the social system, constitutes the main setting in which students’ activities and actions take place. Adolescents have always been the age group in which resistance has been regarded as a rather expected and healthy attitude. It stems from the fact that adolescents tend to question everything displeasing they start to identify and perceive around them No, all this is not part of a guide on adolescence. It is a glance on an age group which has clearly started to build its consciousness and take on responsibility for its own choices and words; a group which very steadily confirms that it is ready to come into conflict with anything taken for granted; a group whose will is honest, romantic, idealistic and intact; thus, it inevitably questions existing structures. Most importantly, it is the generation the future depends on. Vassilis Hatzopoulos consistently uses objets trouvés (objects found) as the steady basis for his works and in using them he composes new works, which assume new functions: His findings range from simple imaginative and useful objects full of humor to hybrid electrical devices full of irony. The work, “We are never gonna die, Principal, you bastard” seems to be the echo of a school protest or a hopelessly boring class hour. Three pens with blue ink and a few paper clips, namely objects used by schools but probably also by bureaucracy, are the tools he uses in his endeavor to construct a sling-shot alongside its bullets, a weapon which is a game and a symbol at the same time. It is the weapon of the weak against the powerful, the weapon of students preparing for trouble, the weapon of someone preparing for their protest through an improvised, cheap plan. If speech is an all-mighty weapon, then Hatzopoulos equips it with a shape. This sling-shot made from pens (already emotionally charged due to the work’s title) is converted from a weapon of speech to an alternative weapon against power. It is a sling-shot for the Davids of every system. Areti Leopoulou  Download CV |  Δε θα πεθάνουμε ποτέ κουφάλα λυκειάρχη |
Sponsors - Media Sponsors
