On Wednesday, December 17, 2025, Ersi Gallery presents a group exhibition entitled "The Paradoxes."

As an ideal field of free expression, art has always included paradoxical forms of representation that subvert logic and all kinds of conventions in our personal and collective consciousness. Depictions of the bizarre and inexplicable have, over the centuries, validated the artist's non-negotiable right to exercise their visual imagination without any constraints.

The uncertainty of the existence of 'potential' worlds, where the absurd has flesh and bones, provokes feelings of anxiety and fear. Throughout history, the revelation of the paradoxical through the work of artists has been one of the most honest and direct responses to the anxieties of humanity's turbulent times. Through the paradoxical, the artist creates personal allegories, escaping from a bleak situation while simultaneously criticizing the destruction wrought by human management of our wider world.

Freud believed that in art, reality is replaced by an illusion, causing a "mild numbness" – which, however, is not enough to make us forget real misery. But the artist who adopts the absurd as a means of recording his intention does not aim to numb or sweeten the bitter truth of the human condition. As demonstrated by the works in the exhibition The Paradoxes, art that embraces the bizarre has the power to reflect the consequences of many conventions that hinder the human struggle towards a higher level of realization. In other words, they reveal the ways in which the paradox leads man before his existential mirror, his contradictions, his savagery, his fears and obsessions, the irrevocable end that time brings to his nature.

The sense of playfulness in the works of Michalis Arfaras and Haris Baskozos seems more threatening than nostalgic, while those of Takis Germenis and Chrysanthos Sotiropoulos explore the imprint of the torment of the soul on the body. Despite their contrasting colors, the drawings of Nikolaos Lazaridis and the paintings of Michalis Parlamas reveal the fine line between the real and the imaginary. The works of Dimitris Pantazis and Miltiadis Petalas attempt to look deep into the human soul, while the form of a strange creature in the work of Orestis Symvoulidis reminds us of the despair of mammals on earth.

Vassiliki Vayenou
Art Historian