Bernier/Eliades Gallery presents “The Athens Algorithm,” Charles Sandison’s fourth solo exhibition in Athens

Through generative code, algorithmic light, and digital architectures, the internationally acclaimed artist explores the poetic fusion of ancient Greek thought and artificial intelligence, drawing inspiration from Ada Lovelace and the origins of logic in Athens

Bernier/Eliades Gallery presents Charles Sandison’s fourth solo exhibition in Athens, titled “The Athens Algorithm.” The opening will take place on Thursday, November 27, in the presence of the artist. Sandison is an internationally acclaimed new-media artist, known for his groundbreaking moving-image works created through digital code.

In “The Athens Algorithm,” Sandison creates a luminous thread that connects the birth of Western thought to the era of artificial intelligence. The exhibition takes place in the city where philosophy, mathematics, and myth first converged in humanity’s attempt to give form to desire and breathe life into language.
A central point of reference is Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, who used her imagination to bridge Romanticism and Rationalism. Lovelace envisioned a “poetic science”- an art of numbers capable not only of data computation but also of expressing emotion.

Sandison interprets this very fusion through generative code, algorithmic light, and digital architectural constructs. His works resemble living texts that occupy space: constellations of words and data that evolve, decompose, and reconfigure themselves. Each algorithm becomes a philosophical proposition, a line of reasoning that takes on movement and light. The result is a dialogue between Athens, where logic was born, and Lovelace, who gave it consciousness; between myth and machine, emotion and analysis. Through this encounter between ancient and contemporary forms of intelligence, the artist seeks the meaning of thought through the language of code, examining whether algorithms – like myths once were -are the new tools of belief.

About Charles Sandison

Charles Sandison (b. 1969, United Kingdom) lives and works in Tampere, Finland. He grew up in the isolation and quiet of northern Scotland and studied at the Glasgow School of Art, where he completed both his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. A self-taught programmer, Sandison discovered in the language of code an artistic medium that soon replaced his early visual explorations in painting and drawing.
In the mid-1990s he moved to Finland, a place where culture and nature deeply inform his work. He has been honored with numerous distinctions, including the Finnish National Percent for Art Awards (2021) and Ars Fennica (2010), and he has exhibited in major museums worldwide.

Selected solo exhibitions include Denver Art Museum, Tampere Art Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, Helsinki Art Museum, The Bourse (Belgium), and Kunstmuseum Basel. He has also participated in significant group exhibitions at the UCCA Centre for Contemporary Art (China), Centre Pompidou, Fondation Louis Vuitton, and Istanbul Modern.
In April 2025, Sandison’s permanent installation Pythia was inaugurated at “pi” in Delphi, commissioned by Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative (PCAI).