Do we live between real and illusion? Plásmata 3, the large exposure of the Onassis Foundation Roof in Pedion Areos invite us from May 27 to June 15 In a world where the limits of reality and illusion are lost and everyday transforms into something magical. For 20 days, the Pedion Areos hosts 25 works by Greek and international artists, many of which belong to the Onassis Foundation’s collection, many in new assignments, which are discreetly spread out in public space as a dream and talk to our daily lives, giving space to the analog.

The surrealist element is not only in the works of the exhibition; it is inherent in the space itself. A natural but constructed park; a place that is revealed like a jungle and hides like a collective sanctuary of our dreams – a constantly transformed setting.

Among hybrid works, strange totems charged with hints of spirituality, mythical animals, ancient pillars of pillars where you lie without pain without pain, monuments made of broken marbles of Athenian sidewalks, illuminated by the power of the embrace of two people, the Amazons on machines, shells that rotate perpetually and through which drops are heard flowing, intimate and open creatures that pop up through the park’s flower beds – Plásmata 3 compose an experience of imagination.

Plásmata 3 do not divide art into digital and analog. On the contrary, they highlight its natural continuity in time: from the shadow theater to project mapping, from painting to film, from video art to today’s digital and post-digital expression. Technology is presented not as an end in itself, but as a tool. Artists do not obey artificial intelligence: they use it, transform it, undermine it, overcome it. With their basic weapon of imagination, they create new narratives that do not submit to the algorithms, but challenge them, reinforce them, drive them crazy.

Somewhere we’ve been back, right? Plásmata 3 is an invitation to a game, a suggestion to see the world around us differently. As in David Lynch’s cinema, the weirdness springs from the familiar and the dreamy look like a memory. What is the Ministry of Anarchiology? Does that owl really move next to Athena’s statue? What is a flock of sheep from Lebanon in Pedion? Can the spirit of the park bring us close? Come gold datsun from heaven? Are the shells sing? Would you like to become a bat?

In the field of Areos we will see creatures that we cannot say for sure whether they are real or out of a fairy tale, a painting by Goya or from our childhood dreams.

OR Aphrodite PanagiotakouArtistic director of the Onassis Foundation, says: “A walk in the Pedion Areos with different plásmata this time. Quiet, discreet, charming, comforting. Of course, proportionate, digital. Creatures that play with the question of what is real and what fantastic, what could happen to the truth and what a dream. A small square to listen to music lying on the ground. Cinema, food, little things that make us feel good. We are looking for ways to thank the freedom of the public space and our association with strangers who brought us the randomness of the ride or the goal of discovering creatures. Yes, we are looking for the sweet lie that beauty, surprise, humor, and ultimately, art can be narrated. The park itself is but an illusion of nature made with a design and human intent. Intimate and tender, this year. After all, we’ve met again. We’ve met before, haven’t we? A small celebration of art, the right to laziness and inaction, the relief power of coexistence. “

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THE Precursor TsiavosDirector of Digital Development and Innovation, adds: “Plásmata is a living workshop of ideas, testing and creation for public space and how we connect with it. As in real life, technology is not an autonomous zone but is identified with the everyday. That’s why it disappears. In art, she will find her roots in the shadow theater, in the media art past decades, and even in magical and religious ceremonies. Plásmata 3 re -raise the theme of the Park in the city center: this peculiar “between”, which is determined by our collective dreams and the material reality they form. The juggler of technology seeks our complicity in illusion. Spirits and elements of the field, sometimes in the form of animals, protect us, talk to us, embrace us. And an anarchist pseudo -archeology asks who we really are. The park is an artificial nature claimed, almost with erotic passion, by all those related to it, but fails to accept the purity of the accusations that desire wants to impose. Plásmata 3, speaking to us through the flower beds we look at without seeing them, invite us to his celebration of openness: where the digital is lost through the dirt of soil, plants, laughter of children and bodies walking on a Sunday afternoon.

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Plásmata 3 are weird. But also adorable. Tender and intimate. They make us wonder: are there? Was they? Will there be? And maybe this may not matter so much. Let’s go to Plásmata 3 to play, without thinking about what is normal and what is not. You don’t need a ticket. Only imagination.

Artistic Address – Curated by: Aphrodite Panagiotakou

Executive Director: Dimitris Theodoropoulos

Program Design and Curator: Precursor Tsiavos

Exhibition Design (Exhibition Design): Lucas Bakas

Artists are involved: Andreas Angelidakis, Ziad Antar, Yoann Bourgeois, The Callas, Dionysios, John Fitzgerald, Pierre-Christophe Gam, Moritz Simon Geist, Efi Gousi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalililil Joreige, Botao ‘Amers’ Hu, Noemi Iglesias Barrios, Kalos & Klio, William Kentridge, Aia Kokkalis, Katerina Komianou, Jiabao Li, Matt McCorkle, Manousos Manousakis, Natalia Mantas, Martyna Marciniak, Maria Mavropoulou, Janis Rafa

A production of the Onassis Foundation Roof

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