The Opening Gallery is pleased to announce In parallax, a solo exhibition of works by Artemis Kotioni curated by Sozita Goudouna, PhD. Installed across the first floor of 42 Walker St, the exhibition draws on structures of earth, biological matter, and celestial forms to challenge our perception of the relationship between representation and abstraction while it investigates how the observed displacement of an object is caused by the change of the observer’s point of view.

Contemplating the notion of the structural, sculptural, and architectural forms that make up the bodies we inhabit and the ground we stand on, the artist creates paintings as ‘places we haven’t been to but that we know exist’, conjuring a pseudo-physics or instinctive-mathematic way of describing them.

The exhibition engages with several layers of inquiry that are bound by a central axis of ambiguity as it explores the space of in-betweenness. The first line of ambiguity informs both the ideation and the pictorial inquisition: that the work sits on the edge of abstraction and representation. Although the elements of the painting are abstract, each may act as a signifier beckoning to correspond to a signified. For example, then the forms that are the protagonists in the triptych titled A future archeology hurtles still are most popularly baptized by the viewer as rocks in a pool. Yet, Artemis Kotioni sees them as rocks, asteroids, cells, potatoes, icebergs, fracking drills, etc.

The multiplicity of the signifieds that could be assigned to each painting is what ultimately makes them tip over the edge and into abstraction instead of representation. Drawing from ambiguity the work investigates the scale of the world and whether the paintings describe structures that are being viewed under the microscope, or immense spaces of cosmological scale. Similarly, to the question of scale, a foundational exploration is whether the pieces are landscape paintings or not. In posing the visual question of whether these are paintings of fantastical landscapes, a tension is achieved by a (at best cubistic) simultaneity in perspective, a simultaneity in receding and protruding lines and planes, and of course, the resistance to drawing the horizon line but the ability to hover in the allusion to one.

In In parallax, the artist investigates contemporary “atmospheric politics” by depicting an ominous atmosphere of a desolate future. The traces of the brutal, colonial nature of the structures that govern us are instilled in the work; exemplified in issues such as the exploitation of planet Earth, as well as the race to colonize space. In this sense, the triptych might depict the act of fracking, the Cross sections of matter might reference the rover on Mars, and the A change in the ocean displays the inner workings of sunken internet cables.

With this body of work Kotioni’s interests traverse the boundaries of traditional understandings of archaeology and the Anthropocene. The paintings pictorially refer to images of archeological spaces, the only real example we have of man-made structures abandoned and left returning to nature, a mirror to a future-scape. To imagine the future scape of the anthropocene, is also imagining the consequences of the travel frenzies, of broken-down vehicles on planets in space, a voyager that never returns.

Nevertheless, following this journey to outer space, the artist lands on planet earth to highlight the imperative of people physically coming together to protect freedom and to empathize with each other across continents. Therefore, the work also gives into the landscape, gives into earthliness, and becomes an ode to the version of humanity we like to look at.

Artemis Kotioni (1995) employs a visual language that is rooted in geometry, her paintings are positioned in the threshold between abstraction and representation, creating an ambiguity that is mirrored in the content of the artwork. Themes that the artist works with combine examinations of scale, geological matter, outer space, archeological ruins and the notion of the landscape, while testing ways of portraying perspective. Using oil paint, she develops techniques to layer transparency, as a way of both, creating depth and referencing the two-dimensionality of the painting surface.

The artist has exhibited her work internationally and her pieces are part of private art collections. She received her degree in Studio Arts from Bard College (2017) and her MFA at NYU in 2024.

Artemis Kotioni’s In parallax is part of “Greece in USA’s” program Greece Now under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture focusing on Greek artists who experiment with “nowness” and reflect upon the ubiquity and social ramifications of “nowness” in their work that was launched in 2020.