Myrto Xanthopoulou is the recipient of the Art Athina Young Artist Award for emerging visual artists, presented for the fourth consecutive year as part of the fair’s initiative to support artistic creation.

The Young Artist Award is an initiative of the Hellenic Art Galleries Association. For the fourth time, Art Athina collaborates with MOMus – Alex Mylonas Museum, one of the five museums that form the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus). The award consists of a solo exhibition at the MOMus – Alex Mylonas Museum in 2026.

After reviewing fourteen submissions and following deliberation, the five-member jury unanimously decided to grant the award to Myrto Xanthopoulou. According to the committee’s statement, Xanthopoulou’s practice develops with consistency and coherence, characterized by the breadth and multiplicity of her artistic media — installations, constructions, drawings, videos, and performances. Her work shows a distinct interest in language as an expressive tool, while various disposable and everyday single-use materials constitute a central element of her artistic vocabulary.

With a reflective and simultaneously melancholic or playful approach, she creates environments out of small gestures, overturning and transforming the given conditions of reality. Her work captures the power of detail and the minimal, as well as her bodily engagement with materials. The notion of the archive, the multiplicity of meanings, and the coexistence of opposites also play a decisive role in her artistic proposals.

The 2025 award jury consisted of:
Polyna Kosmadaki – Art Historian and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Benaki Museum
Christoforos Marinos – Art Historian and Curator
Thouli Misirloglou – Art Historian and Artistic Director, MOMus – Museum of Contemporary Art – Collections of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and the State Museum of Contemporary Art
Yannis Bolis – Art Historian and Head of the Department of Contemporary Sculpture, MOMus – Alex Mylonas Museum
Anna Mykoniati – Art Historian and Curator, National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST)

Myrto Xanthopoulou, Art Athina 2025 © Giannis Boziaris

CITRONNE Gallery and the Hellenic American Union present "Matrix of Worlds", a photography exhibition by Muriel Pénicaud (September, 17 – October 8, 2025). The exhibition is part of the Applied Greek–French Dialogues initiative.

Muriel Pénicaud is a distinguished figure in French public life, former Minister of Labour and Ambassador of France to the OECD. Less known, however, is her identity as an accomplished photographer of international recognition and acclaim. The starting point of her photographic practice lies in her numerous professional and personal journeys, and the experiences that accompany them. The exhibition presents scenes, narratives, and snapshots from the fragile trajectory of our world.

"Matrix of Worlds" serves as a "registry" of humanity—not merely recording visible reality but seeking to reveal the hidden truth that lies beyond first impressions. Pénicaud draws inspiration from the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and his belief that photography should "align the mind, the eye, and the heart". In this spirit, she avoids stylized or staged imagery, following instead her guiding desire that "each viewer becomes the storyteller of their own narrative".

The "Matrix" reflects a personal visual exploration. The wings of birds, human figures, familiar or unknown landscapes, deep-rooted trees, and the bearers of the future emerge through the interplay of light and shadow, transforming into vessels of meaning addressed to the viewer.

Her works have been exhibited in Paris, India, Senegal, Beijing, Tokyo, the United States, and Spain.

"Matrix of Worlds" marks Muriel Pénicaud’s first photographic exhibition in Greece. It is presented within the framework of the Applied Greek–French Dialogues and is curated by Dr Tatiana Spinari-Pollali, Art Historian and Director of CITRONNE Gallery.

Venue: Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery, Hellenic American Union, 22 Massalias Street, Athens

Muriel Pénicaud, Reconciliation? Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2015

On the occasion of Alekos Kyrarinis’s exhibition "Colour Red", writers Dimitris Angelis, Panagiotis Angelopoulos, and Kostas Vrachnos will speak on September 11, 2025, at 20:00, about their relationship with painting and the artist’s work.

Alekos Kyrarinis has always maintained that painting arises as the result of a collective endeavor. Through his engagement with a purely artistic language, he finds a field of interpretation that is communal and inclusive. Over the years, his visual language has entered into dialogue with the work of many poets and prose writers. Indeed, as a primary form of expression, his practice possesses a multiplicity of applications; it is characterized by adaptability.

Yet Kyrarinis does not paint poetry itself, but rather his personal relationship with it. He has collaborated and shared creative paths with Dimitris Angelis, Panagiotis Angelopoulos, and Kostas Vrachnos through their publishing ventures. Kyrarinis’ works have been featured in their literary publications, making this an opportune moment to jointly explore what painting draws as a gift from poetry—and vice versa. Undoubtedly, each art form grants the other a share of serenity, allowing them to coexist harmoniously.

Three writers, therefore—friends and long-standing interlocutors of the painter—come together to engage with the works in the exhibition Color Red, each in their own distinctive way.

UPDATE — 27.10.2025
The presentations from the "Reflections" event were subsequently published in the online poetry magazine Frear: https://frear.gr/?p=37545

Alekos Kyrarinis, Cubism, 2025

In the striking landscape of the Acheloos River delta, within one of the best-preserved ship sheds of the ancient world, artists Angelos Krallis and Panos Charalambous present, on 7 and 8 July, 2025, their new interdisciplinary work "RAST Diversion", curated by Eleni Riga, with the support of 3 137.

The work takes as its point of departure the myth of the Acheloos River, through which memory is explored as an active force of transformation. It focuses on the geomythology of Acheloos, linking the geological, climatic, and cultural history of the area to contemporary issues: water management, extreme weather phenomena, human intervention in the environment, and the vulnerability of local communities. Specifically designed for the ship sheds of the archaeological site of Oeniadae, Aetolia-Acarnania, the work unfolds in a place where the river once met the sea.

The concept of “diversion” acquires multiple meanings: it refers not only to the physical redirection of the river and human efforts to control its waters, but also to the shifting of historical and cultural narratives. Just as a river changes course, memory, too, is redefined—keeping the past alive through a continuous process of revision and re-creation. The “myth” of Acheloos functions as a living archive, where natural phenomena are interwoven with human narratives, overturning structures of power and redefining our relationship with water and land.

"RAST Diversion" combines visual performance with original musical composition. It employs a variety of traditional and improvised sound sources—such as pipes and metal objects—together with live sound processing and microacoustic environments. The result is a sonic happening—an act of “acoustic archaeology” that activates space, time, body, and nature.

Angelos Krallis creates a sonic palimpsest based on the Rast Makam—a musical mode that reached Greece through the Ottoman Empire and influenced Byzantine, rebetiko, and folk music. Here, Rast is interpreted as a slow, ritual tsamiko, enriched through live processing and improvisation. The outcome is a new acoustic experience that resists categorization, attuned to voices and ecologies that challenge human dominance.

Panos Charalambous draws on familiar motifs from his practice—irrigation pipes, metal basins, and a boat from Lake Amvrakia, his place of origin. The boat is transformed into a musical instrument, embodying the intertwined stories that shape our relationship with water and land. He adopts an auto-ethnographic approach, grounded in lived knowledge from the agricultural and fishing communities of Xiromero and Lake Amvrakia. This embodied knowledge reflects a population that is vulnerable yet deeply connected to its environment. Here, “diversion” becomes an act of liberation from linear narratives—a turn toward ecstasy and collective experience, a reflection on the memory of the body and the landscape.

"RAST Diversion" proposes a new way of approaching cultural heritage: as a living, dynamic relationship with landscape, past, and sound.

Supported by All Greece One Culture

RAST Diversion
Artists: Angelos Krallis, Panos Charalambous
Curator: Eleni Riga
Organized by: NPO 3 137
Photographer All Greece One Culture: Christos Karras
Photography: Alexandra Masmanidi

Useful Information:
The event is offered free of charge by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The entrance fee to the archaeological site is required (€5, reduced: €3). Reservation is mandatory. The duration is 50 minutes.

For more information, please visit the website: https://allofgreeceone.culture.gov.gr/en/event/rast-diversion/

RAST Diversion at the Shipyards of the archaeological site of Oeniadae, Aetolia-Acarnania

The event will take place in the context of Christina Mitrentse’s solo exhibition Wood Wide Web at CITRONNE Gallery – Athens, and on the occasion of the publication of the exhibition catalogue, on Tuesday, 20 May 2025, at 18:30.

What are the beneficial properties of mushrooms for humans and the ecosystem? How are they related to books, and in what ways do fungi transform into works of contemporary art? A discussion inspired by the work of Christina Mitrentse, unfolding as an imaginative mushroom hunt across the forests and libraries that shape the artist’s visual landscape. The authors of the publication WOOD WIDE WEB will participate in the discussion:

Christina Mitrentse, Visual Artist
Panos Giannikopoulos, Curator – Art Historian
Nikos P. Paisios, Pathologist – Infectious Disease Specialist

The discussion will be held in Greek and it will be moderated by
Tatiana Spinari-Pollali, PhD, Art History, Director of CITRONNE Galleries

WOOD WIDE WEB catalogue cover, for Christina Mitrentse's solo exhibition

The National Library of Greece presents Alekos Kyrarinis' solo exhibition "Blooming Field", from March 18th to June 20th, 2025.

The exhibition includes sixty-one works created in the last four years, which are being showcased to public audience for the first time, while some of them were especially made for the presentation at the National Library.

The large-scale work which gives the exhibition its title, depicts a vibrant blooming field in Kyrarinis' characteristic visual "language", while viewers will encounter the characteristic symbols he has established in his iconography.

The exhibition is accompanied by a detailed catalogue, edited by Stavros Zoumboulakis, the Board President of the NLG.

Exhibition poster view