Kalfayan Galleries present the solo exhibition of Yiannis Papadopoulos titled ‘Neo Tropical’. The exhibition opening is on Thursday, 16 January 2025, 18:00 – 21.00.

At Yiannis Papadopoulos’ solo exhibition titled “Neo Tropical”, nature occupies the gallery space creating a meta-landscape.

Following the artist’s research regarding the relation between art and eco concience (“The book of Stones”, Kalfayan Galleries 2019; “_Elos”, WIELS, Brussels, 2018-residency and 2022-exhibition; “People Descended From Trees and Deer”, 8th Thessaloniki Biennale), the new series of works titled “Neo Tropical” focuses on a visual language related to the wild vegetation of the wetlands.

The works on canvas communicate the artist’s interest in the sociological and political footprint of nature through a vocabulary of the early graphic arts. Papadopoulos’ artistic practice constitutes an integral part of a personal ecosystem, which contains the artist’s life in the province, care of an orchard and teaching at the Department of Architecture at the University of Patras (Greece).  His works mirror his concern for nature, wild life and a new code of life, in which each human activity takes into account nature. A major source of inspiration and reference is the “low horizon” of West Greece (regions of Achaia and Aetoloakarnania).

In his solo exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries, Papadopoulos creates an environment where he examines and underlines human invasiveness in places where nature remains wild and fragile. His paintings, resembiling large-scale woodcuts, reveal a visual language which - as far as composition and color palette is concerned,- is strongly connected to the early graphic arts. With strong outlines and color frugality, which is reminiscent more of print inks, rather than painting colors, Papadopoulos creates a visual idiom balancing between printmaking and painting. At the same time, persistent groups of reed - symbols of nature’s resistance against infrastructure works- invade the gallery space and create a meta-landscape, whose colors the visitors cannot easily decipher: Is it a mesmerising sunset or an apocalyptic nuclear explosion?