plásmata: refik anadol, SpY, tony oursler + more exhibit public digital artworks in athens

‘plásmata: bodies, dreams, and data’ IN ATHENS

From now until July 10, 2022, Onassis Stegi presents ‘Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data’, a public digital art exhibition at Pedion tou Areos Park in Athens, Greece. Bringing together 25 international pieces by artists such as Refik Anadol, SpY, Tony Oursler and more, the exhibition explores the body, be it individual or collective, human, non-human, or – ultimately – planetary. The artworks are situated in various locations across the park, and include an artificial moon created 70 meters above the ground using laser beams by night (Another Moon by Kimchi and Chips); a humanoid handing out medicine in an abandoned pharmacy at the edge of the park (Dries Verhoeven’s Happiness); and a huge red planet that reminds us of our overheating Earth and of our inability to formulate a collective political subjectivity (SpY’s DIVIDED).

Refik Anadol, Quantum Memories – Probability | image © Stelios Tzetzias

DIGITAL ART EXHIBITION AT PEDION TOU AREOS PARK by Onassis Stegi

‘Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data’ unfolds as a series of curated journeys taking place through Pedion tou Areos, Athens’ largest public park. The team at Onassis Stegi decided on this particular location – a space that started out as an army training ground before becoming a recreation ground for the city’s inhabitants – in order to ‘speak about the body not just as the locus of subjectivity, but also as the field of identitive, political, and social conflict, as the core of both pleasure and pain, and ultimately of our very existence.’ The exhibition gathers work by an international group of artists that explore themes and ideas around bodies after technology, constructed worlds, identities and boundaries, but also imagining new territories, connections and places of co-existence. ‘Plásmata (Greek for creatures), derived from πλάσσω (plasso), which means to form, mould (plastikos), are created, invented, they are animate beings, fantastical or real,’ notes Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, Creative Director, FutureEverything, in the curatorial note. ‘The Plásmata one encounters in the artworks in Pedion tou Areos reveal to us a view of the human experience as a blending of material and immaterial, organic and machinic, a merge of human and nonhuman, social and physical,’ she adds.

Refik Anadol, Quantum Memories – Probability| Image © Pinelopi Gerasimou

The public art exhibition brings together 25 international pieces, new commissions, more than 250 sqm LED works, and 40 solar batteries that collect the energy of the Greek sun to light up the installations. It opens at the statue of King Constantine I and reaches all the way to the Alsos Theater and the pine forest that lies beyond. Curated routes invite visitors to discover parts of the park that are not, in the main, known to the general public. ‘This is a conscious curatorial approach that allows visitors to engage with the exhibition in Pedion tou Areos’ most popular areas before being invited to lose themselves within the park in order to discover startling exhibits, collective activities, and events.’ 

Tony Oursler, Eclipse | © Stelios Tzetzias

SpY, DIVIDED I image © Pinelopi Gerasimou