The Smiling Revolutionary Print - Limited Edition of 24

“The Smiling Revolutionary” is another unconscious cross-pollination between two of the most prominent icons of contemporary culture: the image of the leader of the Latino-American communist revolution Ernesto Che Guevara (which is the most famous and reproduced photography in the world and simultaneously celebrates and distorts his political idea for a revolutionary change) and the positive smiley symbol (as a mighty ambiguous and polysemic graphic weapon, which may well be the most enduring and most popular graphic image of our time). In spite of the complicated odyssey of the smiley ideogram in the distorting labyrinths of Western iconographic cultural history, here it radiates a forewarning positive possibility for change. Intentionally or not, in my Politickin’ cycle, I am dealing with contemporary culture themes that have political background or are a type of commentary on certain imposed political or quasi-political situations. I am interested in what is left of the visual symbols that used to represent big humanistic ideas after the human politicking psyche had appropriated and recreated them into something completely different. Similarly to the destiny of the visual language of graphic design in contemporary marketing, web-communication, and in our global market society in general. I find it interesting that people have always been inclined to this kind of deviation and usurpation of all great ideas and ideologies in line with their own mental capacity, needs, and goals, regardless whether the perpetrators are uneducated individuals devoid of political ambitions or influential international oligarchs with enormous political machinery to support their agenda.