In the café area of the National Archaeological Museum, from June 8 to July 30, 2024, the solo exhibition of Ilias Papanikolaou entitled “Spectacular environments” will be hosted.
Ilias Papanikolaou paints moments. His works are images frozen in time, seen with a humorous mood and pop aesthetics. Images staged to be posted on social media, shiny and colorful, with all those sharp issues that secretly torment each of us smoothed over.
The many and diverse human figures and their journeys through the ages are an inexhaustible material for the visual artist. His heroes don’t look at us, they don’t interact with the viewer. They are distant and isolated, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Set in that framework we all carefully build around us to protect ourselves from the attacks of a reality to which we adapt with difficulty and which we are possibly unable to face. Works created using a lively color palette, reminiscent of Hockney’s paintings, especially those that depict swimming pools and render in a sarcastic mood modern life, which we forget to live, but we do not fail to advertise in our glossy profile. As the painter notes, “my painting is the field where a world is revealed which is connected to the real, follows it closely and draws life from it. The world is made of figures that sometimes stand and address you, sometimes look like an outline on a wall. You don’t follow a transitional era like this with certainties, instead whatever you do should reflect your dialectic reasoning with its fluidity”.
Entrance to the Cafe is free.

Duration: June 8 – July 30, 2024
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday: 8:00 – 19:00 Tuesday: 13:00 – 19:00.
Organizer: Emilia Kougia, tel. 6944417606
Information: www.namuseum.gr