Exhibition: Aristomenis Theodoropoulos | OUT
Curated by Foteini Vergidou

Location: Mets Arts Center, Evgeniou Voulgareos 6, Athens
Duration: 21 October – 06 November 2021
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Friday: 18:00 – 21:00. Saturday: 11:00 – 16:00

The third solo painting exhibition of Aristomenis Theodoropoulos, titled OUT, is held at Mets Arts Center in Athens and presents the artist’s new body of work. After two solo exhibitions, “FEF : HERE” (2018) and “FEF : Before the Echo” (2019), Theodoropoulos invites us to discover all the unseen places that surround us and lie outside the boundaries of the situations we experience.

The moment when something ends is also the moment when something new begins. We usually perceive life as a series of events, a sequence of episodes, ignoring all these intermediate pieces that complete the spectrum of our reality. These elements, located between default positions, often go unnoticed and are discarded as purposeless or parasitic. Yet they are the catalysts that can cause change in a situation or a relationship between two conditions. In his paintings, the artist creates enigmatic, evocative landscapes without necessarily predefining where they begin or end, emphasizing the importance of all these in-between states that are usually overlooked.

The artworks were created during the challenging and demanding previous period, as it was shaped by the unprecedented health crisis and the mandatory confinement that followed. When looking at the paintings, the forms seem to be in a constant flux, creating multiple imaginary paths. This uneasy feeling is referring to the previous phase that was characterized by an uncanny instability. The viewer becomes partaker of an in-between state, a non-defined space, as all these details, that we have learned to ignore or that evoke feelings we may not want to experience, reveal themselves before him. At the same time, the deliberate human absence allows personal narratives to develop around the concepts of isolation and existence. Therefore, the works in the exhibition acquire as many interpretations as the people looking at them.

However, when experiencing this intermediate situation, an interesting tension, capable of changing the course of events, occurs between opposing tendencies. Just as a loud laugh can turn into a loud cry and for a moment the two can coexist, before one prevails and eventually overwhelms the other, in Theodoropoulos’ paintings, the opposites coincide and become synchronized in an unbreakable harmony. The transition from one condition to the other is sometimes so imperceptible that it is almost soundless.

A charcoal site-specific installation, referring to contemporary urban ruins and the ways they can be reinvented, along with an original ambient music composed by the artist, complete the exhibition OUT. Aristomenis Theodoropoulos’ interventions in the exhibition space of Mets Arts Center create an immersive, energetic and riveting experience for the viewer, giving the works a subtle tone of cautious optimism.

Aristomenis Theodoropoulos lives and works in Athens. In 2018 he founded the multimedia project FEF (ΦΕΥ), through which he releases his artistic endeavors, like his two solo exhibitions, one art publication and music. His work spans a wide variety of mediums and materials in drawing, painting, sound and music, while investigating opposite conditions. Theodoropoulos explores the contrasts that can be found between classical structure and abstraction, sacred art and existentialism, experience and the subconscious, pas and present. He has also worked on Set Design for both theater and cinema. His work has been presented in various venues in Greece and abroad.