I didn't even know his full name, just calling him 'Takis the Greek' on the rare occasions it came up. Normally this was brought about by some passing mention of La Défense, or the Île de France (that my poor apprehension of spoken French had compressed together).
And so it happened that I finally managed to see the Signaux Lumineux (1987) on a bright and breezy New Year's Day. It was, to me, long overdue, having carried around a little stapled booklet of poor, high-school-photocopied depictions for all of the intervening years. Though I didn't browse through very often, I knew the handful of images so well, transferring it with the certainty of treasure from one folder to another at each house- or city-move.
We walked at New Year, a little dazed from the night before, and wearing too few clothes for the wind tunnel Champs Élysées, from the far, West side back towards town. I took one photograph of the work, framed against the shiny blue bank-buildings, but it doesn't come close to the stolen, too-dark, folded photocopies.
