Buffalo, NY
People are rarely all that they seem. You cannot tell by looking at my son that he has tumors mottling his right leg. You cannot tell by looking at me that I had a mastectomy. You cannot tell by looking at Fotini Galanes that she is a burn survivor. Nor are artworks always all that they seem. You cannot tell by looking at Galanes’s swarming, swirling, bulbous abstract drawings, rendered in sharp graphite on unforgiving clayboard, that they are her way of exploring body deformation and grotesquerie while letting go of the human bodies that suffer them. But you can know this by talking to Galanes, who prefers to work in coffee shops, where her art making often draws curious onlookers. The moving stories told to her in return for her own then make their way onto paper cups, testimonial to just how commonplace difference really is.
—Lori Waxman 11/11/16 3:30 PM