Panos Profitis, represented by The Breeder gallery, is the winner of the Art Athina award for new artist for 2024, which is awarded for the third year and aims as an institution of the fair to strengthen artistic creation.

The award, which consists of the individual presentation of the artist’s work at MOMus-Alex Mylonas Museum within 2025, was announced on Friday, September 20, by the member of the evaluation committee and representative of MOMus, Thuli Misirloglou.

According to the committee’s judgment, the work of Panos Prophetis “develops with exceptional coherence and is distinguished by the multiplicity of his artistic means -compositions with ready-made objects, sculptures, installations in space and performances-, his experimentation, his theoretical-research context as such is captured through the breadth of his references, which cover a wide spectrum (from the ancient world and mythology to Dante’s Divine Comedy, literature, folklore and history, everyday realities and structures). In an intensely theatrical way, he creates multidimensional environments in which anthropomorphic elements are combined with mechanics, while performative gesture, the concept of time, the dimension of space and constant displacements play a decisive role. His award gives him the opportunity to present his work in the space of a museum, the MOMus-Museum ‘Alex Mylonas’, which gladly welcomes the artist”.

Based on the conditions of participation in the institution, artists up to 45 years of age, who live and work in Greece and are nominated by the gallery that represents them, where they have held at least one solo exhibition, were eligible for the award. The institution is an initiative of the Panhellenic Association of Art Galleries, while Art Athina collaborates for the third time with MOMus-Museum Alex Mylonas, one of the five Museums of the Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus).

The five-member evaluation committee for the award was made up of: Dafni Vitali, Art historian and curator of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Panos Giannikopoulos, Art historian and curator, Thuli Misirloglou, Art historian and artistic director of MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art 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-Museum ‘Alex Mylonas and Irini Orati, art historian and artistic director of the Ioannou F. Kostopoulos Foundation.

Panos Profitis lives and works in Athens. He grew up in a small village at the foot of Parnassos. He holds an MA in Visual Arts (2016) from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, with a focus on site-specific arts / installations, and a BA from the Athens School of Fine Arts (2013). For his master’s degree he received a scholarship from the NEON organization (2015-2016), while for his master’s thesis he was awarded the Hugo Roelandt Prize from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, the Hugo Roelandt Endowment and Objectif Antwerp.

Art Athina is organized by the Panhellenic Association of Art Galleries, produced by the company BeBest. The event has been included in the “Attica 2021-2027” Regional Program.