Sotiris Sorogas

Sotiris Sorogas

June 20, 2009 - July 22, 2009

Poros

Virvili Square
18020 Poros Island
Greece

(+30) 697 9989 684

Opening Hours
Mon-Sun:
11.00-13.00 & 19.00-23.00

Sotiris Sorogas was born in Athens in 1936. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1958-1961). He studied post-Byzantine and folk art. During 1964-2003, he was a professor at the Architecture School of the National Technical University. He was a founding member of the Group for Art Communication and Education and a member at the editorial board of the art theory journal, Speira. He represented Greece at the Biennial of Sao Paulo (1981). He also participated in Europalia (Belgium, 1982) and the 21st International Festival of Painting (Cagnes-sur-Merlo, France, 1989). He was honored by the Athens Academy for his contributions to art (2004). Six of his large compositions have been placed at the Stathmos Larissis station of the Athens Metro (2010). Studies, articles, reviews, and three monographs have been written about his work. He lives and works in Athens.

Old timber and rusted metal parts, are central to Sorogas’s iconography. The scattered, useless, broken, weathered fragments are taken out of context and placed in the center of large canvases, a product of meticulous observation and detailed drawing, emphatically presented in dramatic close ups. The color scheme is limited: black, grays, sepia/rusted browns and sometimes red stand against the bright white background. The hint of blue, among the objects and the background suggests the presence of the sea.

The photographic realism and the characteristic immaculate style of the canvas add a documentary aspect to the image, emphasized further by the ‘literal’ descriptive nature of the title. Those documentary aspects, strongly contradicted by the poetic aspect of Sorogas’ work, convert the depicted objects into symbols.