The Sotiris Felios Collection along with “The other Arcadia” Foundation presents on Wednesday 8th March 2023 at 18.00 – 21.00 the exhibition “The Sotiris Felios Collection – Achilleas Papacostas: Inverse Space” curated by Elizabeth Plessa at the art space “16 Fokionos Negri”, Athens. The exhibition includes 56 works by Achilleas Papacostas, which in their majority can be found in the Sotiris Felios Collection. A selection of works by the artist from his personal collection was also made for the purposes of this presentation. Through this dialogue between the collector and the artist a brief but substantial retrospect of the artistic course of Achilleas Papacostas is attempted.

The 56 works of the exhibition, which date back to 1990 until the present day, constitute a group highly representative of the artistic route of Achilleas Papacostas (b. 1970). The thread connecting the works in the “16 Fokionos Negri” show offers the possibility to the visitor to discern the glance of the collector together with the creative itinerary followed by the artist, from the first steps of his painting to this day. The exhibition is structured around a loose chronological approach, where through the dialogue between apparently diverse works the visual concerns of Papacostas are highlighted, as well as his transition from representation to abstraction.

The curator of the exhibition and editor of its catalogue, Elizabeth Plessa, notes:

With dialogues between the works presented, the route followed by the artist is being traced, from the still lives, the early realist portraits and the full-body figures, to the smaller and bigger landscapes. With the rhythm of the line and the interplay between colours, with sparse and dense features in a purely painting narration which inverts the visual perception of depth without dissociating completely from figuration, Achilleas Papacostas’ landscapes have traversed the distance between the eye and the mind, while safeguarding the physical enjoyment of both painting and viewing.

Nikos Al. Milionis writes in his text:

Achilleas Papacostas doesn’t cross into abstraction, but to a kind of painting free of recognisable imagery, where the subject is understood as an opportunity. He canonises the intensity of abstraction, taking it to the degree necessary so that the work doesn’t turn into stardust. Through this filtered emotional balance, he achieves a precise sense of colour and economy of the subject. His painting is not a cold cerebral experimentation, nor the expressive outburst of a wild idiosyncrasy. The allure of colour becomes the subject of the work.

The architectural design of the exhibition is due to Xenokratis Vartzikos. The show is accompanied by a fully illustrated, bilingual (Greek-English) catalogue, which was printed and produced by G. Kostopoulos Graphic Arts and includes texts by Sotiris Felios, Elizabeth Plessa and Nikos Al. Milionis.

Tours to the exhibition

3 tours will be conducted during the exhibition:

Saturday 18/3 at 12.30 p.m.: Achilleas Papacostas with Elizabeth Plessa (art historian, curator of the exhibition)
Saturday 8/4 at 12.30 p.m.: Achilleas Papacostas
Saturday 6/5 at 12.30 p.m.: Achilleas Papacostas with Panagiotis Doudonis (Specialist in Constitutional Law, Lecturer at Oriel College, University of Oxford)