Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery is happy to present David Sampethai’s solo exhibition

I Ain’t Dead, Just Trying To Hear The Sound Of The Earth Spinning Part I, which opens at the gallery on Tuesday 23 April and will be on display until the 30^th of June 2024.  Part II of the exhibition will open in mid May at a former nightclub in Piraeus.

In this first part, the exhibition comprises of mostly small watercolour paintings and ink drawings on paper, made in 2020 and 2021.  Perhaps echoing the eerie standstill the outside world seemed to be in during ‘20-‘21, these works exude a strange silence. Sometimes carefree or slumberous, the silence suggests a fantasy or a daydream. Other times, silence hides a subject's intentions or becomes a stage for their private rituals.  A birdlike figure glides through the sky at dusk over an empty courtyard.  A naked man awaits a lover while another lies in bed frozen in fear, confronted by a sleep paralysis demon. While silence prevails, it is full of longing and tenderness, feels defeated or dejected, magic and enchanted. 

 The title of the exhibition itself hints towards this silence. We can imagine a figure lying down, with its ear on the ground, eagerly waiting for a sign that the Earth is indeed still spinning, waiting for that comforting, reassuring hum that lets us know the world is still going. The title operates as a humorous declaration and a sort of parable. A declaration that yes, the artist is alive and you cannot separate the artist from the world. A parable, implying that unless one stays completely still once in a while, the world goes unnoticed.