elc team
By Katerina Parri
Theo at the EMST, Goya at the National Gallery, Yannis Pappas at the Benaki Museum, Marlene Dumas for the first time in a Greek museum and “Plásmata” back in Athens: some of the exhibitions worth seeing in 2025. All the exhibitions in detail:
[ 1 ]
Thodoros, Sculptor, Anti-Retrospective | EMST
8.02.25 – 25.01.26
Curator: Stamatis Schizakis
When you hear that an exhibition on Thodoros is being presented at the EMST, along with the high expectations attached to his name and work, it is certainly on the list of exhibitions not to be missed. And it’s one of the EMST’s choices (along with exhibitions for Leda Papaconstantinou and Penny Siopis) that I think is very wise in terms of artists who deserve major exhibitions. Theodore is THE case of an artist for whom I will always be grateful to my dear friend and curator for introducing me to him, and for giving me the opportunity to observe him in a public conversation with him, to realise how authentic an artist he was, from his being to his whole attitude to life. I can’t wait to go to the EMST to see his approach…
The EMST details the exhibition: The exhibition Theodoros, Instead of Retrospective at the EMST is the first attempt to interpret and present the work of the sculptor Theodoros after his death, using almost all of the works and the rich archival material that the sculptor bequeathed to the National Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition attempts to shed light on his profound and prophetic thought, the most important moments of his work and the overall course of a contemporary creator whose words and actions shaped sculpture in Greece.
In particular, Theodoros fought to renew the language of sculpture and to highlight it in an environment where print and audiovisual communication predominated. Within this effort, Theo was a pioneer of innovative and contemporary artistic practices, realising performances, sound sculptures, conceptual works and the first actions of a peculiar institutional critique, for the first time in Greece.
The common denominator in all his activities was the social and political role of the artist and the importance of integrating artistic voices into public discourse. These ideas were put into practice by Theo through his systematic and specific presence in the mass media: newspapers, radio and television. Inspired by Theo’s own exhibition practice and his critical comments on the functioning of institutions, the exhibition design highlights the limits and possibilities of a museum retrospective. Subverting the person-centred and past-oriented character of a retrospective, five artists – Nikos Arvanitis, Paki Vlassopoulou, Iris and Lida Lykourioti, Kostas Bassanos, Yannis Papadopoulos – are presented alongside Theo’s works, which critically engage with relevant timeless concerns.
[ 2 ]
Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos | National Gallery, Central Building
Opening: Wednesday 22 January 2025
Duration: January – September 2025
Curator: Katerina Tavantzi
The year begins with a very important exhibition at the National Gallery, dedicated to the prints of Goya. An exhibition ideal for immersing oneself in the forms and significance of Francisco Goya in the history of world art. A series of treasures from the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum.
Eighty engravings, etchings on paper and watercolours dating from 1797-98 are presented, accompanied by photographs of the preparatory drawings. This is Goya’s first series of prints and the only one published during his lifetime.
The series held by the National Gallery was printed in 1803 and acquired in 1962, when M. Calligas was director. The series of engravings entitled Los Caprichos, published by Francisco Goya at the beginning of 1799, is a milestone in his artistic development, since it was the first time that the official painter of the Spanish court was allowed to express the revolutionary character of an art that was mature and free from the constraints of public commissions.
Inspired by the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of the Enlightenment, which espoused the ideals of reason, progress and freedom, Goya drew his subjects from the life of his time, focusing on the most challenging aspects of the social and political reality around him to criticise the darker aspects of late 18th century Spanish society.
[ 3 ]
Predicted time. The effort of the artist through the work of Yannis Pappas | Benaki Museum / Pireos 138
Exhibition opening: 19.02.2025, 20:00
Duration of the exhibition: 20.02.2025 – 27.07.2025
Another reason why we are being driven to the Benaki Museum of Piraeus this year – and it will certainly not be the only one – is the exhibition on the sculptor Yannis Pappas, which, according to its title and description, promises a very interesting theme and point of view, that of the painstaking work of (any) artist and how ideas, after hard work, reflection and dedication of the mind, become works of art.
The Benaki Museum on the exhibition “Time Given”. Through a multi-dimensional collection of drawings, paintings, sculptures and photographs by the renowned sculptor Yannis Pappas, the exhibition offers a rare insight into the complex artistic process behind his work and the work of every artist.
Moving away from the presentation of the finished work as a singular, isolated entity, the exhibition seeks to reveal the layers of effort, inspiration and experimentation that lead to creation. Through the coexistence of different media, it explores how ideas develop, interact and morph through years of dedication and hard work.
The title reflects the artist’s perception of time – not as a limitation, but as a borrowed resource that enriches and shapes his works. Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the world of Yannis Pappas and witness the arduous journey that transforms fleeting ideas into timeless works of art.
[ 4 ]
Plásmata III | Athens
27 May – 15 June 2025
Adored since the first “Plásmata”, when the Areos field became something else after their experience, also in Ioannina with “Plásmata II: Ioannina” (may they return) and now again. Digital art at its most human, intimate and impressive, in a large exhibition and free of charge.
Plásmata III: From the public and the public space, Plásmata III returns to Athens in May 2025, focusing on the organic and the material, exploring new forms of land art, but at the same time incorporating digitality into artistic and creative expression.
“Plásmata III is a living laboratory, a trans-local machine of desires, dreams and bodies, human and non-human. The urban public space, “nature” trapped in anthropocentrism, especially as expressed through the fantasy and mythology of the park, is again the porous yet solid core around which “Plásmata III” develops. It is a vast magnetic field in which creatures meet, attract and repel, desire and repel, fall in love or separate, pass or remain. It is the material and symbolic space in which everyone creates their own fragmentary and often contradictory realities. It’s an embrace where you don’t know where it’s going to take you. Like any embrace worthy of its name.
[ 5 ]
Yannis Psychopedis: Palermo. People and Ruins | Zoumboulakis Gallery
16 January – 8 February 2025
In Sicily and the ruins of his civilisation, and then on the shores of the Peloponnese, Yannis Psychopedis presents a new visual world along the route of this journey – an installation with the raw material of what the sea washes up. He transforms it into something else that we can see from the first days of 2025 at the Zoumboulakis Gallery. Coloured bricks and tiles, together with his drawings, make up his new solo exhibition ‘Palermo. People and Ruins’.
Details from Zoumboulakis Gallery: This captivating exhibition features an on-site installation composed of painted bricks and tiles, creating a dialogue between structure and art. Surrounding the installation is a collection of one hundred mixed media drawings, offering a multifaceted exploration of the interplay between people and the remnants of the past.
As the artist himself writes: “On the occasion of a recent trip to Magna Grazia and the ruins of its Sicilian civilisations, and later walking along the hospitable Greek coasts of the Peloponnese, far from the paranoia of the constraints of the big city, we also discovered the small treasures that the sea generously offers. Where it brings to the shore beautiful stones, pebbles, broken wood, shells, worn plastic, rusty iron, eaten marble. But above all, it brings the lightest of all, the things that are most easily pushed out by the waves and fill the beaches. It’s the broken bricks and tiles, the small corrupted forms, the fragments of tiles that have lost their original shapes, years in the water. Scattered in the sand, with their strange facets, these “beehives” of broken bricks and crushed pieces, where time has melted away their form, seek an imaginary, elliptical microcosm of a paradoxical micro-sculpture of volumes, plastic rhythms and curves of warm tones.
[ 6 ]
Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues | Museum of Cycladic Art
5 June – 3 November 2025
The Museum of Cycladic Art adds to the great exhibitions of great artists that the Museum of Cycladic Art is accustomed to hosting with the first solo exhibition of South African artist Marlene Dumas in a museum in Greece, featuring more than thirty of her paintings and works on paper, presented in dialogue with antiquities from the museum’s permanent collections at Megaro Stathatos. The exhibition is curated by independent curator Douglas Foglas in close collaboration with the artist. Marlene Dumas’ figures alongside Cycladic figurines… an exhibition not to be missed.
Details from the Museum of Cycladic Art for the exhibition “Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues“: For this exhibition, Dumas has personally selected works from her oeuvre, and created new works, in direct response to the histories of figuration that she explored within the Museum of Cycladic Art’s archaeological collections. Moreover, in a rare occurrence, Dumas has also hand-selected a group of archaeological objects from the Museum’s collection that will feature in the exhibition.
As curator Douglas Fogle has stated: “Βοth mute and loquacious, the bodies that haunt Dumas’s canvases engage in an anachronistic pas de deux with the abstracted human forms of the Cycladic figurines created by unknown artists some five thousand years ago”.
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Michalis Manousakis: Art Intelligence – A Half-Breath Retrospective | Athens School of Fine Arts
9 January – 15 February 2025
Exhibition curator: Dr Panagiotis Pangalos
A major exhibition by Michalis Manousakis “Art Intelligence. A Retrospective as Half a Breath” will bring together around 200 works from 1969 to 2024: old and new works – some of which are being shown for the first time – paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, games and works by friends. The exhibition also marks another milestone in his long career, as Michael Manousakis bids farewell to the ASFA, where he was a permanent professor from 1987 to 2020.
The exhibition, brings together around 200 works that express his personal anxieties, emotions and quests, spanning the period 1969-2024: old and new works – some of which are being shown for the first time – paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, games and works by friends. In the “Nikos Kessanlis” room of the ASFA, the artist captures his thoughts through a journey of narratives, colours, rhythms and images that reflect his deepest psyche.
