Text by Vassilika Sarilaki

“Efi Spyrou always chooses to be doric and symbolic, inventive, conceptual and pithy in fruitful meanings. This time, she oraculates her work with a timeless quote, putting the spectator into thinking mode. This quote reportedly belongs to Jim Morisson, spoken in an attempt to define the meaning of his band’s name, The Doors. The phrase, however, has a history. It was around the 1800’s that metaphysician William Blake, who, besides a poet, was also a very good painter, wrote: «If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite… For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. »

The work at hand mainly reflects the latter meaning. All these small drawers of a rationality made out of glass are being blocked by a metal door and create divisiveness. The work acts like a decryption device that speaks about the, so-called, “threshold of consciousness” and we can think much more in reference to what we allow to become part of the conscious or not and whether denying being aware of the truth leads to neuroses and connivance.

The form of the work is doric and simple. A minimalist work that exudes its own poetry and insight and that performatively blends sculpture with drawing, because this nigh conceivable “table” is actually made up of lines. The made out of chalk boundaries act as an Archimedean “do not disturb my circles”, possibly in an ironic tone confirming the disposition of a willful isolation inside the autism of finite opinions and trapped emotions that cannot be susceptible to any interaction. I can’t but remember Joseph Beuys’ quote, who, when asked why he did his performance where he was trying to explain art to a dead hare, said: “Even a dead animal preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality”.

Vassilika Sarilaki

Art Historian| Journalist| Art Critic