A Decathlete of Arts…
“…In the synthesis of the forms, following the terms “imposed” by the freedom of the loose imagination and the dreams, Marios Angelopoulos gives the role of the protagonist to a purely consumeristic and in many ways pop-art subject. The telephone!... Around this object which, in Angelopoulos’ paintings, takes the dimensions of a subject, the whole “myth” of present-day reality evolves – but this reality is expressed by the development of the forms in the preconcious and subconcious imagination.
The meaning of the TELEPHONE in this work is double-edged. In some of the paintings the stance and the myth which evolve in the painter’s writing have the sperm of reconciliation; in others the expression of threat while, more often, the painter permits the co-existence of both these elements. This happens because Angelopoulos uses symbols in a very dense narrative, which gives very broad margins for various interpretations by the viewer-receiver, and for successive “de-codings” of all offered for functioning as communication codes.
The representative language used by Marios Angelopoulos is integrated within the framework of surrealistic attitude while, in parallel there exist excerpts of realistic writing, references to the West European painting of the 19the century, plus unbelievable chromatic manipulations which do not hesitate to reach neo-expressionist apices. However, the whole structure and the organization of the work maintain a good equilibrium because of the extracted events which give to the composition an architecture of hagiographic arrangements. This is a loan from his studious observation of byzantine art or from his very long experience as scenery director and his attitude toward serving the theatrical myth by changes – the one born within the other.
Marios Angelopoulos has already earned a place in the Greek and World scenic history. Now he can establish himself as a painter, representing a particular Greek surrealism which takes the sap of the imagination and realizes a perfectly modern content, recalling memories of representation... “
Maria Marangou
Art Critic, Curator, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Crete