Konstantinos Ladianos
25 Jan - 24 Feb 2007
KONSTANTINOS LADIANOS
"Feed me"
In Roger Corman’s cult film, The little shop of horrors (1960), the most seductive and at the same time appalling image is that of Audrey Jr., the female man-eating plant with the sensuous lips ala Mae West and the demanding long holler Feeeeeed me... (feed me but also feed me more, as the film progresses and the hero becomes a pawn in the hands of the insatiable Audrey). In the 1982 musical and the 1986 remake, the carnivorous Audrey grows to gigantic dimensions, while singing the same invocation and eventually blooms, revealing the faces of the devoured males in her buds. The central face belongs to her creator and slave, Seymour Krelboyne, who was eaten while attempting to resist her ‘charm’ and stop her man-eating activity. This black comedy, that became notorious not only because it was shot in 2 days but also because it overthrew the cinematic standards of the time, introduced the inexpressive tone of the underground comics (Mad, Sick), hipster dialogues and street sarcasm. “SchlockMonster meets Kerouac” someone noted somewhere.
Konstantinos Ladianos’ new work carries intensely the same ‘sense’ of a similarly edgy black comedy. Meaning the sense of an alarming (if not threatening) work, and at the same time amusing, (if not surreally funny). A realistic but also outrageous work, with empirical extensions but also metaphysical vibrations, with a story and episodic progress but also with a dominant idea and an obsessive perception of the world: Images of the dual and aggressive gender of nature, the triumphant rebound of matriarchy, the beastly skill of the female that consumes the male, not instinctively (like Cronus) but through the cooking ceremony and ‘social’ eating. Images of the female becoming mature / gigantic with endless needs and a full-body tattoo that reads I love you – do you love me (Feed me...) and the final zoom-in to a cathartically crying Madonna with lucid tears and threatening teeth. In this world, the ideal ‘husband-wife’ of alchemists is a romantic joke. The ‘complete’ man occurs from the digestion of the weak man’s qualities by the strong, of the male by the female, of the one that can claim his needs by the one that can impose them. This collision, as it is formed outside but mainly inside us, systematically preoccupies Ladianos on different levels in various times: starting from the charmingly lawless but elegant role-playing which his heroes and environment take on in his previous work, up until today’s most substantial search for transmutations to which such a collision leads. Painting is the vehicle that allows him to share with us reality and history as a joke. His recent work’s complete impression could be seen in the framework of a peculiar ‘magical realism’ (with the literary references of the word), while the somewhat other-worldly completeness of each image, mostly makes reference to a genealogy that includes Italian primitives, Flemish painting, British pre-Raphaelites, the neo-psychedelic and contemporary dance-theatre. Each image contains all the elements of mystery, the key to its’ comprehension as well as the promise/threat of other mysteries. The emotional result is a kind of joy-sadness, like the one that the conscience of the inexplicable, the participation in the Epitaph or the enjoyment of a good black comedy brings us.
Text by NADJA ARGYROPOULOU
© Konstantinos Ladianos
Untitled, 2006
egg tempera on wood
65 x 64 cm
"Feed me"
In Roger Corman’s cult film, The little shop of horrors (1960), the most seductive and at the same time appalling image is that of Audrey Jr., the female man-eating plant with the sensuous lips ala Mae West and the demanding long holler Feeeeeed me... (feed me but also feed me more, as the film progresses and the hero becomes a pawn in the hands of the insatiable Audrey). In the 1982 musical and the 1986 remake, the carnivorous Audrey grows to gigantic dimensions, while singing the same invocation and eventually blooms, revealing the faces of the devoured males in her buds. The central face belongs to her creator and slave, Seymour Krelboyne, who was eaten while attempting to resist her ‘charm’ and stop her man-eating activity. This black comedy, that became notorious not only because it was shot in 2 days but also because it overthrew the cinematic standards of the time, introduced the inexpressive tone of the underground comics (Mad, Sick), hipster dialogues and street sarcasm. “SchlockMonster meets Kerouac” someone noted somewhere.
Konstantinos Ladianos’ new work carries intensely the same ‘sense’ of a similarly edgy black comedy. Meaning the sense of an alarming (if not threatening) work, and at the same time amusing, (if not surreally funny). A realistic but also outrageous work, with empirical extensions but also metaphysical vibrations, with a story and episodic progress but also with a dominant idea and an obsessive perception of the world: Images of the dual and aggressive gender of nature, the triumphant rebound of matriarchy, the beastly skill of the female that consumes the male, not instinctively (like Cronus) but through the cooking ceremony and ‘social’ eating. Images of the female becoming mature / gigantic with endless needs and a full-body tattoo that reads I love you – do you love me (Feed me...) and the final zoom-in to a cathartically crying Madonna with lucid tears and threatening teeth. In this world, the ideal ‘husband-wife’ of alchemists is a romantic joke. The ‘complete’ man occurs from the digestion of the weak man’s qualities by the strong, of the male by the female, of the one that can claim his needs by the one that can impose them. This collision, as it is formed outside but mainly inside us, systematically preoccupies Ladianos on different levels in various times: starting from the charmingly lawless but elegant role-playing which his heroes and environment take on in his previous work, up until today’s most substantial search for transmutations to which such a collision leads. Painting is the vehicle that allows him to share with us reality and history as a joke. His recent work’s complete impression could be seen in the framework of a peculiar ‘magical realism’ (with the literary references of the word), while the somewhat other-worldly completeness of each image, mostly makes reference to a genealogy that includes Italian primitives, Flemish painting, British pre-Raphaelites, the neo-psychedelic and contemporary dance-theatre. Each image contains all the elements of mystery, the key to its’ comprehension as well as the promise/threat of other mysteries. The emotional result is a kind of joy-sadness, like the one that the conscience of the inexplicable, the participation in the Epitaph or the enjoyment of a good black comedy brings us.
Text by NADJA ARGYROPOULOU
© Konstantinos Ladianos
Untitled, 2006
egg tempera on wood
65 x 64 cm