Onassis Foundation Roof: iconic photographer Juergen Teller inaugurates Onassis Ready

The exhibition of you are invited by the iconic photographer Juergen Teller that launches Onassis Ready, the new Onassis Foundation area in Agios Ioannis Rentis. The report You are invited From October 19 to December 30, 2025, it gives a new mark on the cultural map of Athens and also marks a key moment in the artist’s artistic career. Teler’s retrospective exhibition, rich in sign events and decisive encounters from his great career, presents various series, individual works and numerous videos, combining options from previous exhibitions with new, unpublished images extending from the 1990s to the present. A celebration of his art, an active dialogue on the ever -changing paths of inspiration and creative exploration that run through his work, in the most extensive solo exhibition of Teler that has been held in Greece to date.

And although Teller has always had personal works to show, this exhibition coincides with a period where he has found a new meaning as an artist. His immersive works with legendary figures from IGGY POP to Alexander Skarsgård, from Kate Moss to Charlotte Rampling, from Pope Francis’ photography in a women’s prison in Venice Biennale Its liberation, but also images of dead nature and outdoor. At the same time, in the last eight years, Teller has been working with his wife, Dovile Drizyte, on projects that reflect various aspects of their relationship and the birth of their daughter. These works are characterized by a typical blend of serious, intimate and often humorous characters, with an aesthetic that touches the grotesque.

These experiences, decisive for his life, have instilled an underground intensity in the way Teller responds to the world around him, creating source connections that are transformed into profoundly meaningful narratives. His photographic and video works, which have emerged as a result of these connections, explore family and universal stories about love, family, trust, hope, fertility, environment, politics and religion. As a result, his declining emotional bond with the subject embodies positivity, spiritual awareness and a renewed attitude towards life.

The You Are Invited will be presented in Athens by launching Onassis Ready, the new Onassis Foundation, housed in a former factory in the city’s old industrial zone. The space is designed to host experimental works that broaden the boundaries of modern creation and to act as a platform for bold artistic voices from around the world. Onassis Ready also houses the Athenian Node of Onassis Onx – an international program, based in New York, which supports artists working with emerging technologies. Focusing on contemporary art and innovation at the same time, Onassis Ready presents its first major exhibition, in the framework of Onassis’ artistic program for the 2025-26 season.

This collaboration between Jurgen Teller and Roof reflects a common belief that art can be both inward and political, raw and poetic, personal and collective. Through this partnership, the You Are Invited exhibition opens a space of dialogue between Teler’s emotionally charged universe and the modern realities of Greece, inviting a meaningful meeting between local and global.

Contributors

Editing Exhibition: Juergen Teller and Dovile Drizyte

Architectural Design: Tom Emerson, 6a Architects

Production address: Josselin Mezguia (Juergen Teller Studio)

Assignment and production: Onassis Foundation

Juergen Teller

Juergen Teller (born 1964, Erlangen, Germany) studied at the Bavarian State Photography School in Munich and moved to London in 1986. With a career in various kinds of photographic art, Jurgen Teller has made fashion campaigns for many famous brands, as well as editorials for top art and fashion magazines. In 2003 he was awarded the Citibank Prize for Photography from London’s Photographers Gallery, and in 2018 he received the Special Presentation Infinity Award from New York’s International Center of Photography. His work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at the Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain in Paris (2006), Dallas Contemporary in Texas (2011), at the Daelim Museum of Seoul (2011), at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) of London (2013), in the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), (2014), in Bunskunstalle in Bona (2016), at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2017), at the Museum of Contemporary Art Garage in Moscow (2018), at the T-10/SKP-S of Beijing (2021), at the Grand Palais éphémère in Paris (2023) Milan (2024) and Galleria Degli Antichi in Sampiona, Italy (2025). In 2007, he was asked to represent Ukraine as one of the five artists in the 52nd Venice Biennale. His photos have been acquired by many international collections, such as Center Pompidou (Paris), the Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain (Paris), the International Center for Photography (New York), the Louvre Museum (Paris) and the National Portrait Gallery (London). Teller has published over 60 books and has been a professor of photography at the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts from 2014 to 2019.

Onassis ready

In the heart of Agios Ioannis Rentis, an old plastic factory has been transformed into something completely new: Onassis Ready. It is an authentic, generous place in which artists are called upon to dream, rehearse and risk. Extending to 3,760 square meters, it is the latest creative hub at the Onassis Foundation’s ever -expanding ecosystem.

In this building, before its renovation, the research of the project “Xiromero/Dryland” was born and developed, which represented Greece at the 60th La Biennale di Venezia art exhibition. He had already hosted the performances “People and Mice”, “Mars” and “Red Lanterns” as a construction site, directed by Vasilis Bisbiki, the rehearsals of “Prometheus” by Nikos Karathanos, “Climax” Ball in collaboration with Léa Vlamos and there “Frankenstein”.

Onassis Ready is not just a building. It is a place that listens, adapts and invites, ready to embrace the artistic creation of the Onassis Air/Onx Fellows – building a bridge between the natural and metaphorical world. Where Athens meets New York and the rest of the world and where the metaphor intersects with the deep human. Where tomorrow’s ideas can be tested, loud, silent, freely.

Information

Juergen Teller
You are invited

Onassis Ready (Stratis Circus 2, Agios Ioannis Rentis, Athens)
19 October – December 30th 2025
Friday, Saturday, Sunday 18: 00-23: 00

Ticket sale for the exhibition starts in September

Access to Onassis Ready with public transport:

By bus: line 838 Stands: 2nd Agia Anna (300 m), 3rd St. Anne School (280 m)
With trolleys: line 21 | Stop: Papadopoulou (1.3 km)
With Metro: Line 3 | Station: Eleonas (2.4 km)

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