Abandoned Cartographies and Other Odd Hours
CAN
April 4—May 10, 2025
Athens, Greece
CAN
April 4—May 10, 2025
Athens, Greece
Abandoned Cartographies and Other Odd Hours navigates uncharted territories and the inner terrains of the subconscious, forming a tapestry of intuitive explorations that bypass reason, coherence, and order. It reflects on affective experiences that exist beyond our perceived awareness, neither confined by knowledge nor shaped by information. Instead, they ignite new paths of introspection, emerging as manifestations of the fundamental irrationality of the human psyche. As such, the exhibition becomes a vehicle for tapping into unspoken longings and anxieties.
The show engages with many of the conceptual domains explored in Surrealism. However, unlike certain of the movement’s pioneers who rendered their visions with meticulous verisimilitude—lending dreams a tangible, credible presence—the artists in this exhibition stage psychologically charged encounters that highlight a rupture between the self and its external environment, as well as conventional patterns of thought. Sidestepping the notion of Surrealism as a mere aesthetic label, the exhibition instead embraces its core principles and ideas as a state of mind—a mode of creation that privileges the hidden, the unexpected, and the unknowable.
The exhibited works construct a collection of confounding psychological spaces—expressions of involuntary thoughts, instinctive gestures, and buried memories. Recurring motifs serve as swirling, hypnotic symbols, mirroring transient imagery that hovers between walking life and dreams. Viewers are drawn into intricate evocations articulated through distinct pictorial frameworks, where illogical impulses and lingering mystery collide, untethered from resolution or narrative unity.
Some pieces play with the disjunctions between existence and imagination, setting fantastical or foreboding tableaux against dreamy—or nightmarish—landscapes. Drawing upon altered states of consciousness, they invite free association through ambiguity and unfixed perspectives. Others subvert space to create visual paradoxes, compelling viewers to question their grasp of reality through fleeting apparitions and hallucinatory distortions. Then, there are also the works that engage with language in a way that recalls automatic writing, allowing words to emerge as spontaneous chance rather than structured meaning.
Rather than adhering to a singular style, the exhibition brings together a broad spectrum of mediums and techniques across painting, sculpture, installation, works on paper, photography, poetry, video, and sound. Unfolding through shifting materialities and elusive forms, it resists fixed interpretation, summoning a realm where logic dissolves, images unravel, and meaning flickers at the edges of perception.
Curated by: Dinos Chatzirafailidis
Participating artists: Elli Antoniou, Despina Charitonidi, Socrates Fatouros, James Fuller, Shambhavi Kaul, Konstantinos Lianos, Louis-Philippe Scoufaras, Sasha Streshna, Stefania Strouza, Dimitris Tampakis, Yorgos Yatromanolakis
Installation photography: Stathis Mamalakis
Poster by: Eleni Kaskoura
CAN | 19, Chalkokondyli Street, 104 32 Athens, Greece
The show engages with many of the conceptual domains explored in Surrealism. However, unlike certain of the movement’s pioneers who rendered their visions with meticulous verisimilitude—lending dreams a tangible, credible presence—the artists in this exhibition stage psychologically charged encounters that highlight a rupture between the self and its external environment, as well as conventional patterns of thought. Sidestepping the notion of Surrealism as a mere aesthetic label, the exhibition instead embraces its core principles and ideas as a state of mind—a mode of creation that privileges the hidden, the unexpected, and the unknowable.
The exhibited works construct a collection of confounding psychological spaces—expressions of involuntary thoughts, instinctive gestures, and buried memories. Recurring motifs serve as swirling, hypnotic symbols, mirroring transient imagery that hovers between walking life and dreams. Viewers are drawn into intricate evocations articulated through distinct pictorial frameworks, where illogical impulses and lingering mystery collide, untethered from resolution or narrative unity.
Some pieces play with the disjunctions between existence and imagination, setting fantastical or foreboding tableaux against dreamy—or nightmarish—landscapes. Drawing upon altered states of consciousness, they invite free association through ambiguity and unfixed perspectives. Others subvert space to create visual paradoxes, compelling viewers to question their grasp of reality through fleeting apparitions and hallucinatory distortions. Then, there are also the works that engage with language in a way that recalls automatic writing, allowing words to emerge as spontaneous chance rather than structured meaning.
Rather than adhering to a singular style, the exhibition brings together a broad spectrum of mediums and techniques across painting, sculpture, installation, works on paper, photography, poetry, video, and sound. Unfolding through shifting materialities and elusive forms, it resists fixed interpretation, summoning a realm where logic dissolves, images unravel, and meaning flickers at the edges of perception.
Curated by: Dinos Chatzirafailidis
Participating artists: Elli Antoniou, Despina Charitonidi, Socrates Fatouros, James Fuller, Shambhavi Kaul, Konstantinos Lianos, Louis-Philippe Scoufaras, Sasha Streshna, Stefania Strouza, Dimitris Tampakis, Yorgos Yatromanolakis
Installation photography: Stathis Mamalakis
Poster by: Eleni Kaskoura
CAN | 19, Chalkokondyli Street, 104 32 Athens, Greece