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POLYPLOKOS
oil on iron and iron
103 x 53 x 40 cm
2008
collection of the American College of Athens
Nikos Yorgos Papoutsidis' Polyplokos (Complicated) is a modern god from the Complexity series, which owes its name to the special nature of its structure, technique, and operation. The head dominates the entire body, which is made of rough pieces of different types of metal, such as iron and steel, and of various forms of iron, such as sheet metal, flanged metal , rod, and tube coil. All the parts have been sloppily soldered together. Morever, the surfaces of the materials present different textures, oxidations that are intended to constitute the unrefined surface quality. Furthermore, the head demonstrates the technique of "irongraphy" (a characteristic script in relief made by soldering on iron, which Papoutsidis does with the ease, leaving the work looking unadorned and unassuming) on words that refer to the function of Polyplokos in communicating with his fans. Therefore, at various points on the head there are rotating disks, which are irongraphed in English with the following pairs of words: BRAIN / THINK, BIG EAR / LISTEN, and YES / NO. By rotating the words, Papoutsidis gives loyal viewers the chance to influence the answer of Polyplokos, creating a sense of his immediate reactoin to human initiatives. In the center of the head, at the forehead, the word "EGO", reminiscent of this god's entity, has been irongraphed. Irongraphy was also used to render the lips, at the end of a tube that is irongraphed with the word "SPEECH", which crosses the head starting from the brain. The right eye is also irongraphed. The other eye is painted in naturalistic color, but the feathers that flank it symbolize the overarching intellect of the "all-seeing eye", a symbol of divinity in all religions. Finally, the head is framed by a rotating semi- circle, a halo that the devout must turn to the correct optical angle in relation to himself if he wants to turn it on.
Megakles Rogakos07/2007
