Efstathiou sums up the family affair with “Index/Blow Up” a flagship piece consisting of twenty-nine panels. A scrapbook flurry of images is transformed by the artist’s painting style into a torrent of memory, a favorite picture of a family member, a distinct image from a newscast, a long gaze in the mirror. Embedded in this gray world of recollection are a few colorful, sunny images of an empty apartment. Four panels, also of the apartment, are set apart from the others. They are perhaps the present moment, causing the matrix of mediated remembrances. The present world isn’t just framed by the context of memory. If we are not careful, it is buried.
The ugly (and beautiful) truth is that we see ourselves in our relatives and we see ways in which we break the mold, like a mutation in an evolutionary lineage. Efstathiou and Allen show us that dialogue is the ideal form of development where child can learn from parent and parent can learn from child.
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On the Web:
Whitney Art Works: www.whitneyartworks.com
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Ian Paige: ianpaige@gmail.com
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Culture and Lifestyle, History, Painting, More 
, Culture and Lifestyle, History, Painting, Visual Arts, Art History, Cultural History, Judith Allen, Judith Allen, Eirene Efstathiou, Eirene Efstathiou, Less 
