The visual identity of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, set to begin on March 6, has been unveiled with the presentation of posters designed by Dimitris Anastasiou.

The figures portrayed in the three paintings that make up the posters of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival embark on a journey across the Greek landscape, but also to the cities of the future. Without us ever taking a glance on their faces, the people in the Festival’s posters look ahead, towards what is coming up next. The three paintings converse with the tributes and the thematics of this year’s Festival. In the artist’s words: “The three paintings compose a three-fold narrative. If placed aligned, each serves as a continuation of the previous one. The two first (that depict a field of land and a provincial Greek town of the 1960s) allude to the Greek landscape. The third one (that portrays an absurd and imaginary city, whether utopian or dystopian) nods to Artificial Intelligence. Viewers, like time travelers, move within these landscapes.”

Dimitris Anastasiou's posters view

A Cabinet of Curiosities: The first 2025 production of MOMus - Museum Alex Mylona, curated by Yannis Bolis, featuring 78 artists, including Christina Mitrentse, Pantelis Chandris, Panos Charalambous.

The unexpected, the ambiguous and the enigmatic, the imaginary and the grotesque act as a conceptual and spatial grid for the exhibition entitled "a Cabinet of Curiosities" presented at MOMus - Museum Alex Mylona, from 13 February to 31 August 2025. The periodical exhibitions’ space of the Museum in Thissio, Athens, is “conquered” by paintings, prints, sculptures, constructions and videos ‒works remarkably diverse in style, materials, qualities, sensitivities, visual values and aesthetic preferences‒ created by 78 artists.

Emerging in Europe during the Renaissance, cabinets of curiosities came to be identified with a collecting frenzy, aesthetic pleasure and amazement through their wondrous and rare exhibits: these ranged from works of art andrelics to strange and “exotic” artifacts from distant cultures, alongside scientific tools and instruments, objects from the natural world, and items related to medicine, zoology, botany, gemology, mineralogy, and astrology, as well as to the realms of the occult, alchemy, and magic. These cabinets, which can be considered precursors to modern museums, played a pivotal role in shaping Western perceptions of the "other", while also offering an aesthetic, social, anthropological and political space wirh numerous benefits of research.

In the modern, extended Cabinet of Curiosities at MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona, in a multiple connection of images and realities, the exhibits cover a broad thematic spectrum, opening portals to different worlds, times, and regions. The stories they tell, inventive and original, explore concepts such as life and death, nature and technology, vanity and paradox, violence and threat, myth and dream, erotic desire and libido.

The exhibition "a Cabinet of Curiosities" functions as a proposal-challenge for a modern, new "cabinet" which, although apparently creates the fear of emptiness (horror vacui), can nevertheless function as a starting point for a new consideration of the present we live in.

Curated by: Yannis Bolis, Art historian, Head of Department of Contemporary Sculpture, MOMus - Museum Alex Mylona

Opening: 13.02.2025, 17:00-21:00 - Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 10:00-18:00, Thursday: 10:00-21:00 - MOMus - Museum Alex Mylona, Agion Asomaton Sq 5, 105 54 Athens

Curated by Philippos Tsagkridis Panagopoulos and Katerina Chatzi, Steve Gianakos' work will be showcased for seven days (February 11 - February 17, 2025) alongside works by artists from different fields and generations at the newly inaugurated Carco Parking.

Carco Parking, just before commencing its operation, is hosting the group art exhibition Ephemeral Party - the first and last exhibition ever to be held in this space. The Ephemeral Party exhibition redefines an everyday public space into an active hub for encounters. Showcasing 19 artists across various media and materials (painting, sculpture, video, installations, performance art), it explores the fleeting nature of life through the lens of dreams, time, and memories. Emblematic works by Giorgos Bouzianis and Yannis Tsarouchis, alongside a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy are brought into dialogue with modern and contemporary artists from both the local and international art scenes.

The exhibition Ephemeral Party originated as an exploration of fundamental questions about art’s potential to integrate into daily life. Set within a parking, it reinterprets a non-traditional venue as an artistic context, reinforcing the idea that art belongs everywhere: it is unrestricted, inclusive, and accessible to all. Spanning three subterranean levels, the space itself becomes an essential part of the exhibition, amplifying its impact. Visitors are invited to wander through the site and discover works that are "hidden" in unexpected corners.

Concept: Philippos Tsangrides Panagopoulos
Curated by: Philippos Tsangrides Panagopoulos & Katerina Hadji

Steve Giannakos, My Place is Real Tiny, 1985, acrylics on canvas,162.6x137.2 cm, Irene Panagopoulos Collection.

For this year’s First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale, curated by Stamatis Schizakis, Christina Mitrentse draws parallels between books and mushrooms both for their morphology and for their rhizomatic developement.

For the work ISBN: 97861880590 with Shiitake (Lentinus- edodes), Mitrentse, like Bradbury’s book- people, recites the entire Erri De Luca's book The Weight of the Butterfly . She then implants Shiitake mushroom mycelium into its pages, covering the surface of the book with mushrooms after consuming the paper and its words. The work was temporarily left on the edges of the Pardi forest, on the southern side of Psiloritis, at the last large hollow tree that gives the area its name: Toumptotos Prinos.** Inside its hollow trunk, the Kermes Oak is full of mushrooms, connected in turn with the mushrooms and roots of the Kermes Oak trees in the forest. Did Erri De Luca’s story pass from the mycelium of the book to the mycelium of Psiloritis?

The First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale, curated by Stamatis Schizakis, aspires to become a platform of contemporary outdoor culture. By not aiming at an audience, The First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale allows for an exhibiting condition which is unhindered by financial or political interests, but also by the unwritten rules of exhibition viewing interconnected with the current social conventions and morals.

The site of the biennale, Psiloritis mountain, is delineated symbolically as a space of cultural expression through a gesture of conquest, as one conquers a peak and not an inhabited territory that is nationally or culturally determined. The time of the biennale, “always”, results from the acknowledgment of the impossibility of regular event planning in such a untamed place. Its aim is to provide the temporal and spatial framework for the conception, design and potential realisation of artworks that bring the human psyche face to face with nature.

Curation: Stamatis Schizakis

Christina Mitrentse, ISBN:97861880590 with Shiitake (Lentinus-edodes), Shiitake Fungus, 20x14x10 cm. Photo: Stamatis Schizakis.

Steven Antonakos work Remembrance will be part of the group exhibition Its empties, it fills, the light at the Β. & M. Theocharakis Foundation, from November 20th, 2024 to Febraury 16th, 2025.

The artists participating in the exhibition, through installations, painting, sculpture, and photography, explore the conceptual references of light—from its metaphysical dimension to its plastic qualities, as well as its everyday presence—from the 1960s to today.

The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to understand how light transforms from a natural phenomenon into a medium of artistic practice. At the same time, it honors the timeless influence of artists such as Takis, Antonakos, Chryssa, Bouteas, Lappas, as well as Apostolou, Gerasimos, Efeoglou, Karakostanoglou, Kontis, Laskari, Nikolakopoulos, Patsourakis, Sagonas, Touliatos, Charitonidis, and Hasapis.

From antiquity to the present day, the sun has captivated creators. Since the early 1960s, neon light has emerged as an expressive medium for many artists across America and Europe. Figures such as James Rosenquist, Robert Walls, Victor Vasarely, Lucio Fontana, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Doug Wheeler, and Dan Flavin, among others, have shaped the identity of contemporary art with their distinct styles and continuous transformations.

As Takis Mavrotas notes in the exhibition catalogue: "Light remains the unparalleled cause and inspiration of art, as the visual artist continues to make the invisible visible and the intangible perceptible, revealing their vision."

“When light empties and fills again," a phrase often repeated by Panos Giannikopoulos during the preparation of this thematic exhibition, encapsulates the meeting point of established and emerging artists. This intersection prioritizes the expressive power of light—natural or artificial—offering an aesthetic journey into the possible or the impossible.

Exhibition Curators: Takis Mavrotas, Panos Giannikopoulos
Production Management: Marina Miliou Theocharaki

Stephen Antonakos, Remembrance, 1987-1989, installation. The work consists of four parts: Untitled (for my brother Bill) , Neon, aluminium foil on wood, 91.44x91.44x10.16 cm. Untitled (for my brother Tony), Neon, gold foil on wood, 91.44x91.44x10.16 cm. Untitled (for my brother Peter), Neon, gold foil on wood , 91.44x91.44x10.16 cm. Untitled (for my sister Kanella), Neon, aluminium foil on wood, 91.44x91.44x10.16 cm.

Tuesday/August 10/2021 by Nikos Podias is presented as part of FRONTPAGE at the Limassol Municipal University Library, from November 20th to November 29th, 2024.

The Department of Fine Arts at the School of Fine and Applied Arts of Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) develops and organises the second part of the international investigative project FRONTPAGE in collaboration with the European Communication Institute (ECI), in partnership with the Athenian Macedonian News Agency (AMNA) and the open visual arts group AxionArt and the collaboration of the Video Art Festival Miden (Mηδέν). It is supported by various academic institutions, including Donau-Universität Krems (DUK).

The 2nd sequential exhibition of FRONTPAGE project is presented at the Limassol Municipal University Library and wishes to bring in both physical and conceptual proximity, ongoing investigations and negotiations of the cultural relationship of word and image. Through curatorial gestures and relational configurations that involve and develop contemporary interdisciplinary and intermedial formations -between and across multiple fields of knowledge-, the exhibition unfolds within the spaces of the Municipal University Library, taking the form of an expanded art installation.

This installation is conceived under the curatorial intention to examine and negotiate cultural dialectics of what we consider as news, coming from the field of journalism and the event of the news, itself. The event itself, could, therefore, be re-interpreted and potentially re-invented in the Arts. The exhibition is developed as a conceptual and visual choreography throughout the library, where the visitor finds themselves in a new condition of study.

More specifically, the exhibition develops along five main axes: Timeliness - Communication - Image - Word - Memory and will include visual works from already recognized and upcoming visual artists, photographers, photo reporters, and video artists.

The themes developed by the creators have a referential and conceptual approach regarding the transmission of the message, the concept of news, writing, text, and the power of words and images.

The purpose of this project is to achieve an artistic and dynamic outcome through the interaction and collaboration of creators from both the visual arts and the broader fields of journalism and communication. Participants are inspired by front-page newspaper articles they choose and by prominent news from the media, both international and Greek print and digital press. These ‘front pages’ serve as a canvas for creation, commentary, expression, and positioning.

The FRONTPAGE has already been presented at the Melina Mercouri Cultural Center in Athens in 2023, and a new presentation is scheduled in Vienna that involves the participation of creators and communicators from Central Europe’

Eva Marangaki, Visual Artist/Concept/Curator (AXIONART)
Marios Nottas, Director of the European Communication Institute, ECI
Gioula Papadopoulou, Director of the Video Art Festival Miden.
Vicky Pericleous, Assistant Professor | [Ρε:Re] Speculative Fine Art Practices Lab, (CUT)
Andreas Savva Special Teaching Staff, (CUT)
Julia Sysalova, Curator, Art Critic, and Art Communication Educator
Rebecca Taki, Curatorial Assistant, MA Student|MA History and Theory of Art, (CUT)

Production: European Communication Institute E.C.I., AXIONART in partnership with the Athenian Macedonian News Agency (AMNA), AxionArt, Cyprus University of Technology, Festival, Miden

Nikos Podias, Tuesday/August 10/2021, 2023, pencil on paper, drawing, 76x57 cm.