Angelos Antonopoulos creates a personal iconography from diverse sources such as the fragments of ancient Greek sculptures, Duchamp's found objects, and the mysterious and enigmatic elements in de Chirico's early works. Forms and their archetypal elements are central to Antonopoulos's investigation. Objects are taken out of context and are appropriated, neutralized, manipulated, and staged in unexpected and mysterious relations, posing endless possible readings.
The visual world of Antonopoulos is full of surprises, emerging strongly even as the artist restrains himself to a minimalist use of colors - black, white, gray, or an occasional red. On the other hand, the content of his work is completely opposite to the minimalist exclusion of the pictorial, illusionistic, and fictive in favor of the literal. The minimalist approach on paintings is "what you see is what you see." In Antonopoulos, what you see is plenty of implications taking place in a visual space akin to a stage set. His minimalist use of colors provides a universal and timeless context for the metaphysical meaning of the work. The exhibition in Poros includes both freestanding sculptures as well as sculptural reliefs, in which the artist pushes the barrier between painting and sculpture. The main theme underlying the exhibition - and a constant in Antonopoulos's work - is the definition and redefinition of the symbolism implied by the foot/funnel. In Antonopoulos the body is fragmented; the fragment of the foot is taken out of its bodily context and transformed into a symbol playing on an almost surrealist stage, transforming and metamorphosing continuously.
A monumental, rough heavy foot (page 15) is elongated, the texture changes to perfectly smooth, shiny; the sculptural form is heavy and grounded yet simultaneously light and flying. The form becomes ambiguous - perhaps funnel or serpent - then opens up endlessly to be a receiver, an almost archetypal symbol. A white foot cast is wrapped up by a metallic bracing or scaffolding, attached to metal circles and hanging from the ceiling; it moves in an oscillating motion, thus extending out of its restrained position into the surrounding space, continuously creating shadows which, in turn, become an important and changing element of the work. Occasionally the work takes on a heroic quality (page 11), with an almost Egyptian monumentality.
The symbolism of the foot-funnel takes a different direction in his more recent wall sculptures (pages 8, 9, 10). The symbol of the foot is again central to the work in terms of content as well as of composition. Made out of clay (earth) and resembling a tree trunk, it becomes formalistically and iconographically the pushing and stabilizing form in the work, metaphorically implying a relationship of balance between man and nature. This is a group of images characterized by poetic depth, passive melancholy, spiritual and metaphysical feeling, a meditation on solitude that echoes the Romantic attitude in the work of Caspar David Friedrich.
The two figures (pages 16, 17) seem to be mirroring each other, but they are not. Missing parts of the one are added to the other, establishing a dialogue between the two. The viewer is asked to look closely at the work; looking closer, one is completely puzzled by the interplay of surfaces as well as of light and shadow. The shiny surfaces contrast the mute surface of the clays and the metallic grays; all are in a dialogue in the way they absorb and reflect light. The mechanized figures are placed in front of a monochromatic landscape that unifies, systematizes, and canonizes the work. The ambiguity is centered around issues of machine forms versus soft human tissue and organs, inside versus outside, void versus full.
Finally, the exhibition in Poros presents the latest direction of Antonopoulos's work, centered on the human figure generalized, deprived of specific gender and individual features. It is characterized by a machinelike iconography. The mechanical aspect is emphasized by his preoccupation with measurements and structure, as indicated by the lines and letters referring to the different points in the work, echoing scientific drawings. The work engages ambiguity on many different levels.

Tatiana Spinari-Pollali