Zoumboulakis Galleries present Kyriakos Mortarako’s solo exhibition “Erasure”, that opens on Thursday, November 4, 2021.
In his work, Mortarakos validates and creates the image of ‘erasure’ starting from the idea that “erasure and smudge are the parents of thought”.According to him, erasure is the element that connects the notions of memory and trace with the present time; remnants of the thought, those that once existed, construct space in his paintings and dominate the present.
The smudge, the procedure of erasure, of rejection, are finally the concepts that associate with exclusion, with choice, with dominance, but also with the toilsome procedure of constructing the present. This is how the triptych trace-memory-past tense are concluded and bear witness to their inherent limits with the addition of erasure or smudge.
Inner spaces, chairs, mirrors, beds, erasured phrases, even the floor and the hammered windows, that according to the artist are sources of light and not symbols of darkness, are all literal references to the artist’s life, which additionally to the element of time, were turned into dominating symbols.
The artist does not reject the past. For him it is a motivating force, an instinctive source of drawing images. Mortarakos brightens up the gesture, the never-ending procedure of producing a work of art, by creating the image of erasure.
His works, oils on canvas and on MDF panels of various dimensions, introduce the relevancy between the past, the current and the future existence. The human presence is absent but yet, it is always insinuated.
Artist Short Bio:
Kyriakos Mortarakos (b. 1948) studied painting, fresco and stage design at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Y. Moralis, K. Xinopoulos and V. Vassiliadis. He has held twenty solo exhibitions at historic art venues in Greece and abroad like, Zygos Gallery, Washington D. C and Nees Morfes Gallery in Athens. He has participated in various group exhibitions and art fairs internationally like, the Benaki Museum, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, National and Municipal Galleries, the Sismanogleio Palace in Istanbul, Arad biennial in Romania, Artist Guild China Center for Creative Arts and the Kunstverein Kunsthalle in Berlin. His work is part of numerous institutional collections, like the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Greece (EMST), as well as private collections like the Central Bank of Europe in Frankfurt, Germany. From 2005 to 2015, he was a professor of the School of Fine Arts of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki where, from 2015, he is an Emeritus Professor. He lives and works in Athens and Thessaloniki. “Erasure” is the second solo exhibitions he presents in Zoumboulakis Galleries.
