The exhibition All the Wrong Places examines the relationship between interior and exterior spaces, challenging traditional spatial understandings. Painting, sculpture, and installations guide viewers through an exploration oflandscapes that blend familiarity with paradox. The artists investigate proximity and distance, the loss and integration of self within space, as well as the processes of control to which space is often subjected.
The exhibition approaches withdrawal through the concept of space as a perpetual issue to be managed and negotiated. It culminates in “wrong” inhabitations as open invitations for new discoveries. The artists reflect on geographical location in relation to time, digital acceleration, the mnemonic functions of space, and its social and environmental destruction conditions. They focus on “representations” of landscapes and forms in an era that seems to have alienated us from place and time within an unstable environment that appears increasingly uninhabitable.
Exploring the relationship between the living, the inanimate, and the unlivable, the exhibition revisits traditional compositions of still life and landscape, reinterpreting their materiality and symbolic dimensions. Decay, vanity, and everyday beauty become tools for awakening as the artists delve into art history and the social field. By transcending the obvious in representation, they reveal the complexity of relationships between subject, object, and space. Boundaries blur, and new possibilities for habitation emerge, focusing on the precarious, the marginal, the overlooked, or the abandoned. The viewer is connected to a disintegrating world where the past interacts with and feeds into the future, creating new ecologies. Disassembled landscapes are reconstructed and recontextualised.
The forces of entropy and transformation are central to the exhibition. While still lifes traditionally depict the limits of decay, the works presented reconsider vulnerable transitions and the forced appropriations of destruction, insisting on the possibilities found within cracks. Visitors are invited to reflect on adaptive strategies that stand with uncertainty yet persist in resisting, seeking connections and relational spaces. In All the Wrong Places, the notion of “wrong” is transformed from a perceived endpoint into a catalyst for new narratives and opportunities for coexistence.
The work of Vasilis Vasilakakis (Angista, Serres, 1968) examines the fragile interplay between space, self, and materiality, offering a contemplative approach to the overlooked and the unexpected. His paintings focus on pause and introspection, drawing attention to the silent significance of the ordinary. They invite viewers to sustain their gaze on objects that might otherwise escape notice. Vasilakakis explores how proximity and distance shape our perception of place and presence. His works are not static images but dynamic encounters, where the tension between permanence and transience creates a space for inner exploration. The artist embraces simplicity and an essential sense of balance. His paintings offer moments of quiet resistance and opportunities to rediscover the complexity within the seemingly mundane.
The work of Vasilis Galanis (Athens, 1994) delves into the intersections of history, technology, and cultural memory, creating spaces where the past collides with the present and collapses, giving way to reinvention. Through a multidisciplinary approach incorporating sculpture, installations, and digital media, Galanis analyses the forces that shape modernity—speed, ambition, and the fragility of progress. At the core of Galanis’ work lies the exploration of destruction and creation. Drawing on theories by Paul Virilio on technology and disaster or redefining classical forms within virtual landscapes, he examines the precarious balance between ambition and failure.
The work of Fiona Elli Spathopoulou (Athens, 1989) interrogates the labyrinthine relationship between technological media and madness, exploring how technological and cultural frameworks influence our ways of perceiving and experiencing reality. Her practice engages with the psychological fractures that emerge in a world dominated by hyper-connectivity and mediated representations. Together, Galanis and Spathopoulou construct multi-layered visual dialogues. Their work challenges conventional notions of time, space, and cultural continuity, reflecting our era’s instability while proposing new ways of inhabiting its fragments. Their practice recontextualises familiar narratives by incorporating references to classical antiquity and contemporary digital culture. Figures from antiquity interact with avatars of modern media, unravelling the tensions between tradition and the algorithms of an ultra-accelerated world.
Georgia Damopoulou (Athens, 1969) envisions a reality where the boundaries between nature and synthetic materials blur, creating hybrid environments that challenge our understanding of the natural world. Her work explores humanity’s need to represent nature in an increasingly alienated world, proposing a “post-nature” where plastic emerges as an enigmatic Eden—both alluring and suffocating. Using resins, zip ties, and industrial materials, Damopoulou constructs landscapes that pose questions about survival under new, precarious conditions of coexistence. Her environments combine tactile and familiar materials with a sense of the uncanny. Central to her practice is the idea of the “vegetative symbiote,” a parasitic entity that assimilates and mimics its hosts, inspired by John Carpenter’s film The Thing (1982). This form serves as a metaphor for the tension between fusion and transformation, the organic and the artificial.
Marco Eusepi (Anzio, 1991) offers a renewed approach to painting, creating works on canvas and paper that balance between the complete and the fragmentary. His depiction of natural elements appears as a quiet reversal of the still-life tradition (nature morte), with the field of the natural and the living becoming a framework for introspection and exploration. The elements he depicts actively engage in a dialogue with the surface of the painting and the gestures of mediation. The soft hues, layered stratifications, and deconstructed forms subtly reconfigure the vocabulary of nature morte, opening new ways of seeing the natural world in a moment of flux. They shift our attention to the act of painting itself, where form and intention intermingle, and the histories embedded seem to unfold anew. Eusepi’s works, through their familiarity, evoke a sense of timelessness while gesturing toward the present. He invites us to reexamine our relationship with what we call “nature”, the boundaries of the artificial and the very act of representation.
Athanasios Kanakis (Athens, 1983) works at the intersections of materiality, memory, and space, creating compositions that combine photography, sculpture, and prints. He focuses on traces—both natural and intentional—that embody presence and absence, opening a dialogue on how images transform into objects. By transferring photographs onto plaster or concrete blocks, he creates sculptural objects resembling artefacts, challenging the boundaries between natural decay and deliberate intervention. This process allows the image to acquire material substance, offering a multi-layered, tactile experience. Kanakis’ compositions reveal the concept of inhabitation not as a static state but as an ongoing negotiation with space and time. The artist invites us to reconsider the relationship between image and object, representation and reality. His works exist as forms suspended between creation and erosion, reflecting on the nature of the traces we leave behind and the shaping of the landscapes we inhabit.
Yiannis Bouteas (Kalamata, 1941) explores the relationship between material, space, and time, inviting viewers into an ever-transforming experience. The artist integrates his practice with the environment in which it unfolds, creating vibrant, evolving relationships. At Batagianni Gallery, a chance encounter with a locust on a window triggers connections to past works, where the insect had appeared as a symbolic element. From Stratifications–Energetic Images-XVI (2007) in the Athens Metro to An Unexpected Visitor Suction-Cupped to My Window (2024), Bouteas revisits and reframes recurring motifs. In his latest work, the insect is magnified and positioned atop a sequence of numbers held together by clamps. Numbers, letters, and words are disconnected from their original context, transforming into conceptual frolickings. This composition creates multiple layers and information strata, with light as a central mediator. Artificial light attracts bothinsects and the human gaze, blurring the boundaries between allure and entrapment. The artist constructs dynamic systems that take into account the relationship between light, form, and sensory perception. Through the playful use of materials and references to the every day, he responds to the concepts of time and space. Bouteas incorporates the creation process into his work, remaining open to unpredictability and allowing room for moments of surprise that shift the gaze toward the significance of the fleeting moment. The concept of play remains central to his practice, creating a space of continuous experimentation.
Kostas Pappas (Athens, 1974) creates charcoal drawings that exist in a state of tension between stability and flow. Pappas composes captivating scenes where elements hover, clash, and ultimately coexist. These fragmented landscapes of terrains and architectural constructs offer an invitation to explore, questioning the viewer’s sense of time, place, and perception. The artist constructs a world teetering between dystopia and possibility. In his work, nature and human constructions intertwine in precarious yet strangely symbiotic relationships. Pappas’ landscapes are liminal spaces—thresholds between destruction and recovery—reflecting the psychological disorientation of contemporary existence shaped by ecological anxiety and shifting notions of place. Yet, amidst this sense of instability, there lies an underlying invitation to reclaim and rethink these spaces.
Roxane Revon (France, 1986) invites us into a world where distinctions between the human and the natural dissolve, revealing the complex, often invisible networks that sustain our presence. In her Mycelium and Roots series, Revon collaborates with living materials—mycelium, bacteria, and plant roots—to create works that are alive, constantly evolving, and connected to growth, decay, and renewal cycles. Revon’s installations, incorporating natural elements like seeds, minerals, and living roots, uncover the hidden systems beneath our awareness. By reorganising these materials, she reveals living patterns and structures that echo the unseen processes sustaining ecosystems. Through this lens, art becomes a dynamic network where human and non-human life forms are inextricably linked.
All the Wrong Places
Αrtists: Vasilis Vasilakakis, Vasilis Galanis & Fiona Elli Spathopoulou, Georgia Damopoulou, Marco Eusepi, Athanasios Kanakis, Yiannis Bouteas, Kostas Pappas, Roxane Revon
Curated by: Panos Giannikopoulos
Opening: Saturday, January 25, 2025, 12:00 – 15:00
Exhibition Duration: January 25 – February 22, 2025
Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 16:00 – 20:00
Saturday: 11:00 – 15:00
Batagianni Gallery, Antinoros 17, 116 34 Athens
Contact:
t: +30 210 7238047
e: [email protected]
www.batagiannigallery.com
