Leonidas Papadopoulos presents a new group of works in continuation of his previous show featuring work with polyester resin as the main material. Point of reference, this time is the hand. White, smooth and strong, part of a figure which does not exist. A familiar hand, the hand of David.

Complete figures with both hands tied together in front, remind us of Cycladic idols. Their features are not clear and their texture is coarse like that of a stone or rock, one would find on a Greek island of the Cyclades. The only smooth part of the composition being the water pipes, through which, photographic memories ‘flow’ giving us a sense of inner liquidity within the rigid male and female bodies.

The police caps, a symbol of force and power, familiar to us from the artist’s previous work are present this time, too, in pieces, scattered around, as remnants of a decaying old regime. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, these symbols challenge any participant who is willing to put an order to a world, to a system of relations and values, while at the same time the air is full of hints about the notions of “judgement”, “trial”, as well as with those of “power” and “subversion”. Alongside the coarsely textured figures-idols, there is a witness stand in miniature. On its usual place, there is the bible and, of course, the expectation of the hand that will take the oath on the bible. A hand that could belong to David, to the figures-idols or the viewer himself.

* Press release from Leonidas Papadopoulos’s exhibition at Batagianni Gallery, Athens, 2011.