TUMULT: Elena Soterakis
September 19 – October 26, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 19, 2019, 7-9 PM
Curated by Tatiana Arocha
Poetry by Samantha Vacca
Sound design by Michael Clemow
In nature, beauty is not always tranquil. In Tumult, Elena Soterakis synthesizes the fear of impending environmental disaster with visceral colors to engage the onlooker from both a social and aesthetic perspective. The fusion of painting and collage in Tumult––the ornate waste depicted through collage and the landscape in oil painting––represents the layers of atrophy in our consumer culture. The Romantics and Soterakis’s other inspirations, like William Turner and the placid landscapes of the Hudson River School, reacted to the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution. But Elena responds to the looming ecological disasters brought on by monoculture and an ambivalence to science. Despite the willful ecocide and potent consumerist agenda promoted by lobbyists, gas companies, and corporations, artists like Soterakis push boundaries in their art, and their lives, without trepidation.
Press for TUMULT
“In Bay Ridge, An Art Show About the Dire Urgency of Right Now”, by John Avelluto for Hey Ridge
“Painted Protestation: The Works of Elena Soterakis”, by Michal Gavish for Sci/Art Initiative