Eirene Efstathiou at Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens

Eleni Koroneou Gallery is pleased to present the new solo show of Eirene Efstathiou, titled Riot on Mars.

Figured as a Space Opera, the new works are speculative maps, diagrams, and surveys of a teeming and rich present. Drawing on an extensive personal archive compiled by the artist over several years, the works draw from both found images and Efstathiou’s own photographs. Source images range from the news and historical archives to 20th century images of outer space, as well as abstract landscapes.

The works are poetic and associational; they inquire into the nature of motherhood and queerness, and also consider which plants might survive a warming planet. They observe aspects of ruin in public space, the eroding civic infrastructure, instances of social unrest and uprising, while focusing primarily on the vastness, beauty, and ultimate unknowability of both inner and outer space. One thing the works are certain of is that there are still plenty of reasons to have a riot.

Made entirely by hand, the works layer a variety of printmaking techniques (etching, lithography, silkscreen, monotype) with painting and drawing elements. This approach favors multiplicity, repetition, variation, and the reassembly of elements, mirroring how memory and events are imprinted on the body and the landscape like a palimpsest.

The exhibition Riot on Mars is a layered constellation of images and associations, where personal and collective histories converge within a speculative, ever-shifting present.

Eirene Efstathiou was born in 1980, and lives and works in Athens, Greece. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Selected solo exhibitions include: Diagonal Latitudes, (duo show w. Judith Allen Efstathiou) Cove Street Arts, Portland Maine, (2023), A Jagged Line Through Space, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (2019), Regarding the Continuity of Disrupted Images, (duo show w. Eduardo Matos), Irene Laub Gallery, Brussels (2017); I Draw, I Learn Greece, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (2016); Kiafa, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (2014); Memories of the Present, Mot International, Brussels (2013); Customer / Value / Service at the Project Room of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (2010). Most recent group exhibitions include: “ENCORE, Νew Greek Painting”, Athens Municipal Art Gallery, Athens (2023), Portals, former Tobacco Factory, NEON organization, Athens (2021), Little did they know, 39th EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art, Limerick, Ireland (2020),  When the Present is History, DEPO, Istanbul (2019); Anatomy of Political Melancholy, Athens Conservatoire, Athens (2019); La veritá é sempre un’ altra, in collaboration with EMST, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (2018); ANTIDORON – The EMST Collection, Fridericianum, Kassel (2017); The Equilibrists, Benaki Museum, Athens (2016); Reverb, New Art From Greece, Grossman Gallery School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, USA (2014); No Country for Young Men, BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium (2014); The System of Objects, DESTE Foundation, Athens Greece (2014); Vanishing Point, Action Field Kodra, Thessaloniki, Greece (2012); A Perpetual Present, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland ME, USA (2011); Reference/Representation, The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, Zone – D, Thessaloniki, Greece (2011); Public Private Paintings in Mu.Zee in Ostend Belgium (2010); The Perpetual Dialogue at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York (2009-2010). In 2009, Efstathiou was the recipient of the Deste Prize by the DESTE Foundation, Athens, Greece.