Between photography and painting. This week’s exhibition recommendations in Athens, 3-11.11
Again and again, painting faces the challenges of the contemporary age, as digital media continue to produce images that rival — and sometimes surpass — the painted surface. Today’s painters are called to stretch the limits of their medium, to reinvent it for the here and now. At the same time, photography, too, grapples with its own crises — from digital transformations to the disappearance of the photographer altogether. This week’s exhibitions explore the tension between painting and photography, where artists blur the boundaries between mediums and create a new visual language, one that bridges history and technology, material and illusion.
Wishing you a wonderful week,
filled with powerful, inspiring art.
Shani Werner & the ATHENS ART TOURS Team
Antonis Kapnisis — DeadenD
Ikastikos Kiklos DL Gallery, Athens
6 Akadimias St., Athens
07.11.2025 – 30.12.2025
Antonis Kapnisis is a relatively young artist — and that fact matters, because he brings a perspective on painting that reflects a generation of artists who grew up within the photographic revolution of the 2000s. With this in mind, it becomes especially intriguing to look at Kapnisis’s paintings: at first glance, they look entirely like photographs — or even more so, like photograms, those early photographic experiments from the 19th century, when photography itself was being born. Other works, however, may appear as cutting-edge digital diagrams.
It is precisely within this tension between tradition and progress that the true fascination of Kapnisis’s art emerges.
In his new exhibition, he presents black-and-white acrylic works on paper. The images resemble a mix between Max Ernst’s surrealist paintings, Escher’s drawings, mythological illustrations, and sketches of royal gardens — a blend that, for all its ties to the past, feels unmistakably of the present moment.
More info here
C O S T I S — Blue Alphabet
Roma Gallery, Athens
5 Roma St., Kolonaki, Athens
16.10.25 – 15.11.25
Technological change has always evoked mixed feelings — excitement and curiosity on one hand, fear and resistance on the other. Every shift toward something new involves letting go of the past.
The artist Costis was born in Athens in 1950 and has followed a long creative path through different periods and changing times. His work has evolved accordingly, though it seems that in the 1980s he found his central theme — the phenomenon of lightning or electrical discharge. He approaches it not as a mere documentation of a natural event, but as an act of creation in itself. He is best known for his ongoing photographic series in which he records electrical discharges generated by a special device he built himself.
Although these are photographs, the bluish, mysterious works quickly distance themselves from realistic imagery; there is something amorphous and abstract about them. One can see within them stars, underwater creatures, or even a womb.
These are the last few days to see this extraordinary exhibition.
More info here
Lucas Samaras — Master of the Uncanny
The Intermission × Pace Gallery, Piraeus
3 Gr. Lambraki St., Piraeus
25.09.25 – 20.12.25
Lucas Samaras was born in Kastoria, Greece, in 1936, and immigrated to the United States in 1948. Throughout his career, which unfolded mostly in the U.S., he navigated the tension between cultures and explored themes of identity through playful experimentation across different artistic media. When looking at Samaras’s works, it can sometimes be hard to pinpoint a single guiding line — he engaged in sculpture, photography, painting, digital media, and wearable art — so versatile and expansive. Perhaps that’s only natural for a career that spans so many decades.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Samaras’s practice is his response to technological change. One of the major challenges facing painting as a medium is the constant emergence of new media that produce “better” images than painting itself. Samaras confronted these questions in light of the shifts of his time, creating a series of paintings that carry a digital sensibility — resembling glitching computer screens or distorted televisions. It’s fascinating, and also deeply beautiful.
This is a large-scale exhibition that captures the breadth and depth of this important artist’s work.
More info here
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