“Safe Area”: CITRONNE Gallery presents in Athens the new solo exhibition-installation by Nikos Podias

On Thursday, October 23, CITRONNE Gallery presents in Athens the solo exhibition-installation by Nikos Podias, titled “Safe Area.”

Nikos Podias draws his themes from traditions and echoes of global culture. In his technique, he explores and tests the transformative possibilities of paper, reshaping and transmuting it. The resulting works – textures, forms, rhythmic patterns – give rise to objects and beings imbued with the magical, protective properties of talismans. Safe Area is a new body of work that constructs a potentially shielded yet fragile space.

Protection and the warding off of evil are central to his process of restoring the original material, which unfolds through multiple stages of transformation. This metamorphosis, a deeply personal quest for the artist, isolates him from external stimuli. Immersed in the repetition of gestures, his gaze turns inward; studio time becomes personalized; the making of the works advances almost unconsciously.

Podias draws inspiration from folk allegories, myths, and tales from local and broader traditions: the snake’s shed skin, a symbol of protection and good fortune; the hedgehog’s quills, emblems of defense and wisdom; the Eastern talismanic shirts meant to avert evil. The artist creates paper constructions resembling fabrics – protective yet simultaneously delicate, airy, and light. He restores and reanimates used, reclaimed materials such as cigarette foil papers or tea bags.

A network of anonymous collaborators collects Podias’s materials. These discarded yet functional fragments are recycled and transformed into works that mirror the collective imaginative subconscious, as embodied in archetypal amulets. Each material carries a private memory, its origin preserved in the intricate, fragile constructions that Podias “molds.”

The resulting patterns and textures resemble structures-shells or landscapes-skins, forming peculiar, vulnerable spaces. These finely woven environments intertwine and unfold within the exhibition space, giving rise to an otherworldly dimension. Within a single piece of paper, personal and collective experience converge. Through reconstruction, multiple memories surface and generate multiple readings.

At CITRONNE Gallery, Podias installs Safe Area as an unexpectedly enigmatic and alluring environment. The viewer perceives luminous reflections and shadows diffusing through the works – a visible lightness juxtaposed with the deceptive sharpness of the materials; the paradox of a paper armor. These seemingly contradictory elements create a liminal state between safety and precariousness.

About the Artist

Nikos Podias (b. 1974) graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Dimitris Mytaras, and continued his education at Central Saint Martins – College of Art and Design in London, completing a postgraduate degree in Scenography.

In his artistic practice, he collects, reshapes, and revitalizes fragments of history, cultures, and everyday life, generating associations and narratives. He chooses fragile materials that evoke decay, processing them with methodical care; by preserving and tending to them, he resurrects unconscious and collective memories.

His works focus on oppositional concepts – matter and the ethereal, fragility and hardness, the ephemeral and the timeless, the imperfect and the complete, the structured and the free composition. His technically meticulous works embody detail, time, care, and devotion – elements that reveal the ritualistic nature of his practice.

A recipient of the Onassis Foundation Fellowship (2000), Podias has been a member of the curatorial team of the independent organization Video Art Miden since 2005, dedicated to the research and promotion of video art. His works have been presented in numerous site-specific installations and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad.