RODEO Istanbul

June 21 – July 19, 2008

Eftihis Patsourakis

Problems of Everyday Life

Rodeo is pleased to announce the first solo show of Athens based artist Eftihis Patsourakis. First introduced to Istanbul with his delicate but massive installation Light Notes during THIS THEN THAT, his post-it notes on the windows of the tobacco warehouse linger between his older and newer work. Always experimenting with objects of common use, everyday materials, and things that we throw away he creates a world of ephemera revivals that comment on the past but also the present. Through this game he makes a larger comment on the modernist utopian project. Found cigarette butts and old photographs take new forms and meanings. As a way of being, the normal and the everyday become the centre of attention and through delicate and sensitive gestures we encounter a new world made out of ours.

In Skeleton he uses passport photo cut outs, frames of bygone bodies, figures that once were there but now their traces have become abstract lines and colors within the white repetitive grid.

In a similar way, he brings Erase to life; found photos from the 60s and 70s painted over and over with only a few traces left that signify what was happening in the original picture; some feet or a hand holding a knife.

In his latest work Sand, empty pages of old photo albums are hanging like mute people with many things to say; family summers, the events in a national holiday during the junta, a wedding. His practise although referring to certain moments in the history of 20th century art, proposes a new way of dealing with the present.

Eftihis Patsourakis, Skeleton, collage made of passport photo paper cut-out, dimensions variable, 2008. Installation view, Problems of Everyday Life, Rodeo, Istanbul, 2008

Eftihis Patsourakis, Skeleton, collage made of passport photo paper cut-out, dimensions variable, 2008Installation view, Problems of Everyday Life, Rodeo, Istanbul, 2008

Eftihis Patsourakis, Erase #2.9, painting on found photograph, dimensions variable, 2008

Eftihis Patsourakis, Erase #2.9, painting on found photograph, dimensions variable, 2008

Eftihis Patsourakis, Sand, framed found album pages, 2008

Eftihis Patsourakis, Sand, framed found album pages, 2008