Eirene Efstathiou
27 Mar - 01 Jun 2013
EIRENE EFSTATHIOU
Memories of the Present
27 March - 1 June 2013
MOTINTERNATIONAL BRUSSELS is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Belgium by Eirene Efstathiou.
The media culture in which we live encourages the diffusion of an enormous number of images, principally
via the internet. Because these images are drawn from an infinite collection they are often consulted and
used without reference to their original context. Their mundane use leads to a loss of reality in relation to the
event which originally produced them.
Eirene Efstathiou works on this contextual deficit inspired by images whether from photographs, print media
or her own photographs. She adds to these ‘original images’ another media layer by reproducing them pictorially.
With this process the artist inquires: what creates the disparity between the events as an experience and
as a media representation? The resulting artworks allow for a further rearranging in the reading of the images,
revealing the uncertainty of the meaning of the events themselves. In a way they are landscape paintings but
social-human-urban landscapes. Efstathiou uses painting and printmaking as mapping tools for an alternative
cartography of events.
The artist focuses on the documentary potential of the images. She examines the past through her pictorial
technique which involves re-adapting and selecting the original image to create a new context. Images from
the press, even if critical always have a direct relationship to power, and often simply repeat the narrative that
power tells about itself. How then to work with these sorts of public images? How to ‘blast’ them out of this ‘official’
narrative? How can these images of recent history, in their new context, be used to try to make sense of
the present and to ask questions about it, such as, what is in crisis and for whom?
In order to do this, Efstathiou builds an archive of images around a particular theme. She compiles archives
of images ‘surrounding’ moments of political crisis and social unrest, but somehow peripheral to these events.
The work presented in this exhibition, Memories of the Present, is an excellent example of her approach. The
series presents a compilation of painted images of photographs from the Greek post-dictatorship era. The
images express ruin, deadlock, conflict, oppression, but also resistance, resilience and hope. Influenced by the
context of the images that she appropriates, she builds a narrative coloured by subjectivity and detached from
official history. Use of series permits the artist to break the linear structure of representation, giving the spectator
the opportunity to reconstruct a narrative through a non-sequential reading. The images depict divergent
memories of shared events; some seem monumental, others are beneath notice. They become in this way a
common story, inviting both recognition and identification as well as misrecognition and reinterpretation.
Eirene Efstathiou was born in 1980 in Athens where she lives and works. She received the 6th Deste Prize
from Deste Fondation in 2009. Selected exhibitions include: 3 Artists, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens, Greece,
2012; A Perpetual Present, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, USA, 2011; Ieras Odos Revisited, Eleni
Koroneou Gallery, Athens, Greece, 2010;Customer/Value/Service, Project Room of the National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece Perpetual Dialogue, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New-York, USA, 2010; PPP,
Private Public Painting, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium, 2010.
Memories of the Present
27 March - 1 June 2013
MOTINTERNATIONAL BRUSSELS is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Belgium by Eirene Efstathiou.
The media culture in which we live encourages the diffusion of an enormous number of images, principally
via the internet. Because these images are drawn from an infinite collection they are often consulted and
used without reference to their original context. Their mundane use leads to a loss of reality in relation to the
event which originally produced them.
Eirene Efstathiou works on this contextual deficit inspired by images whether from photographs, print media
or her own photographs. She adds to these ‘original images’ another media layer by reproducing them pictorially.
With this process the artist inquires: what creates the disparity between the events as an experience and
as a media representation? The resulting artworks allow for a further rearranging in the reading of the images,
revealing the uncertainty of the meaning of the events themselves. In a way they are landscape paintings but
social-human-urban landscapes. Efstathiou uses painting and printmaking as mapping tools for an alternative
cartography of events.
The artist focuses on the documentary potential of the images. She examines the past through her pictorial
technique which involves re-adapting and selecting the original image to create a new context. Images from
the press, even if critical always have a direct relationship to power, and often simply repeat the narrative that
power tells about itself. How then to work with these sorts of public images? How to ‘blast’ them out of this ‘official’
narrative? How can these images of recent history, in their new context, be used to try to make sense of
the present and to ask questions about it, such as, what is in crisis and for whom?
In order to do this, Efstathiou builds an archive of images around a particular theme. She compiles archives
of images ‘surrounding’ moments of political crisis and social unrest, but somehow peripheral to these events.
The work presented in this exhibition, Memories of the Present, is an excellent example of her approach. The
series presents a compilation of painted images of photographs from the Greek post-dictatorship era. The
images express ruin, deadlock, conflict, oppression, but also resistance, resilience and hope. Influenced by the
context of the images that she appropriates, she builds a narrative coloured by subjectivity and detached from
official history. Use of series permits the artist to break the linear structure of representation, giving the spectator
the opportunity to reconstruct a narrative through a non-sequential reading. The images depict divergent
memories of shared events; some seem monumental, others are beneath notice. They become in this way a
common story, inviting both recognition and identification as well as misrecognition and reinterpretation.
Eirene Efstathiou was born in 1980 in Athens where she lives and works. She received the 6th Deste Prize
from Deste Fondation in 2009. Selected exhibitions include: 3 Artists, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens, Greece,
2012; A Perpetual Present, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, USA, 2011; Ieras Odos Revisited, Eleni
Koroneou Gallery, Athens, Greece, 2010;Customer/Value/Service, Project Room of the National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece Perpetual Dialogue, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New-York, USA, 2010; PPP,
Private Public Painting, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium, 2010.