12 August 2016
Among the most interesting themes in the oeuvre of Prassinos are cypresses, trees, and Turkish landscapes. The cypress woods in Üsküdar he saw every time he stepped out on the terrace of their house in İstanbul or the trees in Petits Champs must have been strong images of childhood for Prassinos. Possessing a powerful meaning with their roots firmly grasping soil, trees also allude to his own existence through a similar metaphor in the artist’s imagination.
The trees in the Paintings of Torment series, on the other hand, are of particular importance as they comprise the compositions he created when Prassinos realized he was nearing the end of his life. While the studies seen here belong to the series he created for the Notre Dame de Pitié Chapel in St. Rémy de Provence, they constitute the ultimate works of the artist.
In the study of the three thorny, leafless, and nearly withered trees, the artist seems to points the viewer to a new life to be born out of the ground at the point where another life is ending.
On the 100th anniversary of his birth, Mario Prassinos returned to İstanbul and his place of birth Pera, where his story began, to share, through this exhibition, the many things he took with him in his memories.Mario Prassinos, In Pursuit of an Artist: Istanbul-Paris-Istanbul exhibition took place at Pera Museum between 25 May - 14 August 2016.
I walk over rocks hot as iron under the September sun. I can make out a few lines in the distance, and a few cracked rocks, but apart from those, not a single tree, not one plant
About a year ago, Ela was dead for seven minutes. Death had come to her as she was watching her younger brother play gleefully in the sandpit at the park. A sudden flash that washed her world with a burning white light, a merciless roar resembling that of a monster…
I remembered a game as I was waiting in the passenger lounge for the ferry to arrive just a few minutes ago. A game we used to play at home when I was young, in my country that is very far away from here, a relic from the distant past; I don’t even remember how we used to play it. The kind of game that makes me feel a thousand times lonelier than I already am among the crowd waiting to get on the ferry.
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