Word games. This week’s exhibition recommendations in Athens, 29-5.9
Art is a language of signs. It is the artist’s way of using brushstrokes, material, photography, or any medium to convey ideas or emotions through visual symbols. As art history progresses, especially in a world full of images, the language of symbols becomes increasingly complex. Yet art continues, and the use of symbolism, substituting one concept for another, becomes more deliberate. This week’s exhibitions explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of spoken, written, and visual language. When language itself becomes the material, the search for meaning breaks free from limitations and reaches its furthest extent.
Wishing you a wonderful week,
filled with powerful, inspiring art.
Shani Werner & the ATHENS ART TOURS Team
Paolo Colombo: Music and Mosaics
29.9.25–8.11.25
Bernier/Eliades Gallery, 11 Eptachalkou Street, 11851 Athens
Music and Mosaics – a poetic title for the delicate and beautiful exhibition by the Italian artist Paolo Colombo (b. 1949, Turin, Italy). It seems fitting for an Italian artist educated in the traditions of classical Greece and shaped by the Renaissance and Neoclassicism, which has ultimately returedn to Athens, the cradle of that very cultural heritage. His work is typically intimate and meditative, blending Byzantine art influences, Greek folk traditions, and a personal language of meticulous drawing, subtle shadows, and fine lines, giving his pieces a lyrical and introspective quality.
In his new exhibition at the esteemed Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Colombo presents three sound installations alongside a selection of mostly watercolor paintings. The sound installations create a dialogue between visual art and early 20th-century Greek folk music, serving not merely as background but as an integral part of the overall exhibition experience.
More info here
Antonios Panagopoulos: Espace de Memoire 1985–2025
30.9.25–25.10.25
Ekfrasi – Yianna Grammatopoulou Art Gallery, 9a Valaoritou Street, 10671 Athens
Another exhibition by a respected and long-established artist opens this week at the beloved Ekfrasi Gallery. Antonios Panagopoulos was born in Athens in 1957 and studied music, mechanical engineering, interior design, structural applications and painting. From this eclectic background, one can expect work that is complex, aesthetically rich and thought-provoking, and indeed, that is exactly the case.
Panagopoulos is deeply interested in language, or the “language of signs” within culture. His work can be described as a semiotic investigation, exploring systems of signs and meaning, how words, images, sounds, gestures and more create meaning and interact with each other and with the audience.
In his paintings, Panagopoulos combines text in multiple languages with graphic symbols, layering them to create a dense interplay of languages. What begins as a legible system of signs can become so layered and complex that the meaning is sometimes obscured. In a world increasingly dominated by visuals, where books become series or films and messages arrive as images or emojis, Panagopoulos’ focus on language feels more relevant than ever.
More info here
Christina Dimitriadis: J’ai perdu mon Eurydice
October 2 – November 29, 2025
Eleni Koroneou Gallery, 30 Dimofontos Street & 7 Thorikion Street, 11851 Athens
Many texts and works of art have been created in homage to the tragic story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the lovers separated by death and driven by Orpheus’ longing for his deceased wife. What sets this story apart from other romantic and tragic tales is its honest engagement with death and our struggle to confront it, as well as the difficult challenge Orpheus faces—not to look back at his beloved following him and, above all, to trust.
Christina Dimitriadis’ exhibition is the result of an artistic journey devoted to an in-depth exploration of the Mediterranean, particularly the Aegean islands. In her travels and photographs, she traces the remains of ancient marble routes—quarries, enduring mountains, eroded peaks, and ancient temples—all the places where this material of rich significance can be found. Marble is a substance of elegance and embodies the beginnings of Western thought and aesthetics, but it also carries darker aspects, considering the trade, enslavement, and violence humans have enacted for its sake. Viewed more broadly, marble can be seen as a symbol of both human achievement and the collapses into which humanity can descend.
Like Orpheus, who struggles to trust and cannot restrain himself, losing his beloved, the artist walks in the shadow of a domineering and destructive humanity, following the traces of marble and the echoes of history it preserves.
More info here
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