Kontopoulos is an artist and designer, interested in constructing mechanical systems and tools for exploring the poetics of everyday human behavior. Through invention, experimentation and iteration, his systems evoke metaphors about social relationships and the human condition, reflecting on habits both conscious and unconscious. Born in Philadelphia, he has lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.
This body of work stems from the concept of measuring and representing anxiety, inspired by certain countries efforts to impose a quantifiable value to the “happiness” of its people. Even contemporary articles in prestigious magazines aim to measure the worlds “happiest countries”. Michael's work assumes that if you can “measure” happiness than you can also “measure" unhappiness. Taking this as his point of departure, the work investigates
the politics of quantifying the subjective; in the case of these sculptures,
anxiety or unhappiness. By doing this, he applies the poetic and contentious qualities of this idea, to the contemporary American problem: a nation in crisis, and a state of palpable, national anxiety and guilt.
The objects in this series exist ideally in domestic environments. They are designed as tools or appliances, for people to use in their homes, offices or other spaces of dwelling. They function as systems, using as their input, the behavioral, physical habits of anxious people and representing/ visualizing those gestures in various physical, absurdist forms. The objects beg the question of their own origin, simultaneously proposing the science fiction
of their potential existence, and offering the prospect of making that fiction into fact.
