TUMULT

Solo exhibition at Stand4 Gallery, Brooklyn NY, 2019. Curated by Tatiana Arocha. Collaborative sound installation collage with sound artist Mike Clemow.

Exhibition Statement
By Samantha Vacca

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.

Though landscapes could be seen as a heavily trodden territory, the seven pieces in Tumult stand out because of their blatant intuition; they’re emotive but tangible. By exploring new avenues and introducing a variety of textures and vantage points—the aftermath of a hurricane, a dessicated beach, land that’s been fracked—a routine pastoral transforms into a succinct marriage of sensorial balance. Soterakis draws on nature’s vulnerability toward man, and how technological complexities are just as responsible as day-to-day behavior when it comes to environmental devastation.

Elena Soterakis thrives on being part of a community ecosystem—a place where symbiotic relationships imbue artistic vision. Her inherent perseverance and dedication to her craft is ideal for any collaborator—and for me, the experience of working with Elena on this project has been sublime. At the epicenter of where science, activism, environmentalism, and Romanticism meet—the pieces in Tumult are turbulent depictions whose colors and textures harmonize the calamity of our current climate.