Opening: Friday 12 September, 2025, 20:00
With the title itself, "La Bocca La Grotta" (The Mouth The Cave), referring Plato’s allegory of the cave or to the divinations of chthonic oracles, the balances between archetypal dualities, such as light and darkness, the upper world and the underworld, comedy and drama, life and death, the worldly and the metaphysical, articulate the solo show by the award-winning artist Panos Profitis at MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona (5, Agion Asomaton Square, Thissio) in Athens, from12 September to 30 November 2025.
In the exhibition ‘La Bocca La Grotta’, Panos Profitis's sculptures and installations are presented, not by chance, in a museum dedicated to contemporary sculpture, inviting viewers to boldly move their gaze into the shadows, where the promise of certainty is called into question. Speaking in a hybrid and unmistakably postmodern visual language, Profitis returns –morphologically– to the plastic origins of archaic sculptures and –conceptually– to the human body, treating it as both symbol and myth.
The historical depth of his practice, and even more so the vivid continuity his work achieves as an integral part of the evolving field of Greek sculpture, are ultimately presented in thoroughly modern artistic form. His sculptures/installations, expressing an innovative and personal narrative, reveal an artistic idiom that demonstrates its solid historical and aesthetic background; they converse with the past while revisiting it through fully modern materials and perspectives.
Any well-structured artistic body of work is typically articulated in the form of units that allow for experimentation and inquiry to develop in depth. This is also a hallmark of Profitis’ work, which demonstrates the consistency and prowess of his artistic inquiry. Comoedia, Mythologies/New Terrains, From Callas to Medea, Epistemologies of the Sun–these are all series and concepts of thematic and conceptual cohesion, technical rigor, and steady evolution. In the exhibition at MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona, his works emerge as hybrid events that initiate lively conversations with space, light and darkness. Monochromatic, metallic, austere, and well-defined, these sculptures fuse anthropomorphic, zoomorphic or mechanomorphic characteristics.
This exhibition is part of the established collaboration between the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus) with the Hellenic Art Galleries Association and the Art Athina institution for the Young Artist Award, seeking to support and promote the work of emerging young contemporary artists. The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue, with the supp ort of Art Athina.
Exhibition curator: Areti Leopoulou, Art Historian-Curator, MOMus
The Art Athina 2024 Award for Young Artist
The Young Artist Award, first introduced to the Art Athina program in 2022, is evolving into a prestigious institution with very promising potential. The award was launched by the Hellenic Art Galleries Association in partnership with the Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus). The strong response from art galleries and the exceptional quality of nominees at Art Athina 2024 are testament to the institution’s rising prestige and dynamic growth. For the third consecutive year, the award recipient will have the opportunity to showcase their work at the MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona. This year’s solo exhibition by Panos Profitis, represented by The Breeder gallery, will gain added prominence as it coincides with and is part of the parallel programme of Art Athina 2025, scheduled for September 18 to 22 at Zappeion Megaron. Discovering and promoting the work of young artists is central to the mission of art galleries and a primary objective of the Hellenic Art Galleries Association, the founding institution of Art Athina.
The Art Athina 2025 Young Artist Award will be presented during in a special Art Athina event on Friday 19 September at 18:00 at Zappeion Megaron.
Artist’s bio
Panos Profitis lives and works in Athens and is represented by The Breeder gallery. He grew up in a small town in the foothills of Mountain Parnassus. Profitis holds a Master in Visuals Arts (2016) from the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp with a focus on site-specific arts/installation art, as well as a Bachelor degree from the Athens School of Fine Arts (2013). He also holds a degree in Graphic Design from Akto Art & Design College (2008).
His work has been presented in exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Solo exhibitions (selected): Fluttering of the line / a dialogue with Alekos Fassianos, Alekos Fassianos Museum, Athens, Greece, 2025· ΚΩΜΩΔΙΑ/COMOEDIA, The Breeder Gallery, Athens, Greece, 2023· From Callas to Medea – An Installation in Three Acts, Greek National Opera, Athens, Greece, 2023· Primitive Future, Annie Gentils Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium, 2017. Group exhibitions (selected): Augmented bodies, 4th edition of Artocène – Contemporary Art Biennale, Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc, France, 2025· The Posterity of the Sun, curated by Ludovic Delalande, VIMA, Cyprus, 2025· Weird Double, curated by Jerome Nicod, 10N Gallery, Menorca, Spain, 2024.
He has received numerous awards and scholarships: for his postgraduate studies, he received a scholarship from the NEON Organization (Master’s in Fine Arts, 2015–2016), and his master’s thesis earned him the Hugo Roelandt Prize from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Hugo Roelandt Prize from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Hugo Roelandt Estate & Objectif Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium, 2016). He was also awarded in the “Artworks” Artist Fellowship Program by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF Artist Fellowship Program, 2018) and represented Greece in the exhibition Errors Allowed at the Biennale of Young Artists, Ancona, Italy (2013).
Furthermore, he has participated in numerous residencies (selected): Studio Volante Residency, Rome, Italy, 2018· Initiator Residency, Eleusis 2021 European Capital of Culture, Elefsina, Greece, 2018· Saline Residency, Public Sculpture Residency supported by the Peloponnese Municipality, Porto Heli, Greece, 2018· Residency in Moita Serra, coordinated by Kris Vant Hoff, Porto Muchela, Portugal, 2015·Bronze Casting Foundry Introduction, one-week workshop organized by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in Alts, Belgium, 2015· Survival-kit, coordinated by Stephan Dillemuth, residency in collaboration with the Akademie der Kunst München, Germany, 2014· Everything Flows Residency, coordinated by Norbert W. Hinterberger in collaboration with the Bauhaus University of Weimar, Hydra Art Station, Greece, 2012· Animation and Moving Image Residency, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2012
Caption
Panos Profitis
Seed that took root and blossomed, 2023
Casted aluminium, aluminium pipes, natural pearls
165 x 80 x 7 cm
Courtesy: Panos Profitis, The Breeder Gallery
ART ATHINA AWARD
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