vasilis markosian’s ‘I have…’ cabinet delves into the way we live

the greek artist vasilis markosian presents his new artwork ‘I have
 two televisions, 
two remote controls, 
two landline phones, 
two mobile phones, 
two batteries, 
two clocks,
 two computers, 
two lighters, 
two cooking appliances, 
two radio tape players, 
and one life to enjoy them!’ — a cabinet, consisting of two panels made out of glass on the top and wood in the lower part. it resembles the vitrine at first sight, the characteristic furniture for displaying porcelain, crystal glasses and other everyday objects belonging to the world of petit-bourgeois coziness.

the artwork was part of the exhibition ‘a generation of the ‘90s’ in athens, curator andreas fakis
all images © leonidas germanopoulos and pipi

the open panels allow us to notice the bust of a man on the first shelf centrally placed and surrounding of trees, similarly geometricized as the man himself. on the shelf below common industrial, utilitarian and high-tech products from the’90s culture, such as portable radio tape players, lighters, electric cookers, computers and laptops stand in pairs; they are thoughtfully arranged in a symmetrical way so that shapes, sizes and colors respond to each other and, at the same time, they serve a deliberate rhythmic compositional strategy. 

closed cabinet. materials: enamel, acrylic, spray, wood, glass and plastic, 212 x 92 x 41 cm

all objects are surrogate items, meticulously constructed out of wood, and it is this undoing of the manufacturing process that salvages the artisanal modes from a return into an attitude of design culture. ‘the artist here combines the assemblage aesthetic with an intuitive sophistication, and negates the aestheticization of the consumer goods’, says art historian konstantina drakopoulou. ‘another issue I would like to raise is that in markosian’s tidy world industrial products operate semiotically; they are the signified of a wasted life. the title — an integral part of the work — lists tediously the pairs of the objects in the vitrine while the last line reminds the viewer of the one and only possibility to live, i.e. to live uniquely’.

the centrally placed bust is surrounded by common objects

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