“Straining Against the Frame” by Yorgos Papafigos at CYPHER Gallery

The independent gallery CYPHER presents a solo exhibition by Yorgos Papafigos, curated by Dinos Chatzirafailidis. Titled “Straining Against the Frame,” the exhibition introduces a new body of work in which the artist constructs hybrid systems around conditions of confinement, protection, and control. In Papafigos’ practice, CGI, 3D scanning, and printing transform the digital realm into sculptural matter and spatial experience. The focus shifts from the body being constrained to the structures that make such constraint possible.

Material oscillates between the organic and the artificial, the protective and the threatening. As mechanisms of production, care, and surveillance intertwine, safety and restriction cease to function as opposing poles and instead share the same infrastructures. Wire fences and industrial materials that develop protrusions suggest that whatever organizes or safeguards simultaneously holds the potential to coerce.

In Same Side (2025), two mirrored bird-like entities become visible only through the frame that both confines and produces them: digitally scanned barbed wire rendered in photopolymer resin. Connected segments hold the forms in suspension, as they attempt an escape that is never fully realized. The video projection Filter (2025–26), created in collaboration with Dimitris Batsis, extends this logic into time, as a process without beginning or resolution.

In the Hosts series (2025), the emphasis shifts from entrapment to coexistence. Mechanical components and imprints carry organic resin elements resembling parasites or cocoons in an indeterminate stage of transformation. Host and guest become so interdependent that the distinction loses meaning. What emerges remains the residue of an ongoing process. In Untitled (2026), the honeycomb form, inherently organic and alive, is cast in resin as frozen, impenetrable, and inert.

Rendered in a limited, almost monochromatic palette, the two works on paper form nebulous atmospheric zones. Homogeneous pastel surfaces unfold through traces, interruptions, and ruptures in the pigment. Perforations evoke puncture and mark the limits of the surface as potential points of escape. The works function as fields of tension in which absence acts as a medium.

The exhibition space is organized as an environment of pressure and instability. Representation recedes, narrative lacks temporal continuity, and information arrives fragmented and technologically mediated. Within this framework, ambiguity permeates the exhibition as an active and unresolved condition.

Yorgos Papafigos (b. 1989, Greece) is a multimedia artist who lives and works in Athens. He holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice (Moving Image) from the Royal College of Art in London, as well as a BA and MFA in Painting from the School of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

His work has been presented internationally at major institutions and events, including the WRO Media Art Biennale (Poland), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Plexus Projects (New York), the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, The Wrong Biennale, Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki, and MOMus – Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki.

He has held a solo exhibition at Plexus Projects (New York) and participated in curated programs such as the EMST Mentorship Programme (Athens, 2025–2026). He has been an artist-in-residence at PADA Studios (Portugal) and has collaborated with organizations such as NEON and LUX.

He is the recipient of the Schilizzi Foundation Award (United Kingdom, 2018).

He currently teaches as an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.