The Bernier/Eliades Gallery is pleased to present “Hard Shoulder“, a solo exhibition by Rallou Panagiotou, the artist’s first solo show in Brussels and her third with the Bernier/Eliades Gallery. The opening will be held on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 17:00-20:00, in Brussels in the presence of the artist.
“Snakes colliding with these obstacles mimic aspects of light or subatomic particles when they encounter a diffraction grating”
P.Schiebel, et al., Mechanical diffraction reveals the role of passive dynamics in a slithering snake.
The exhibition consists of a suite of new sculptures conceived like characters of a static absurdist theater play. In the exhibition, all elements that appear in the works – partial bodies, objects, and places – become equal agents of open narrative possibilities. Each sculpture appears as a composite topology with a materiality synthetic and natural alike. Each examines the relations of objects, environment and the body in moments of leisure and reverie. Marble bas-reliefs, printed or industrially coated surfaces, and copies of architectural features morph together into fragmented mise en scènes.
The sculptures refer to a place that is real and simultaneously imaginary; a coastal setting of gardens in disarray and structures reclaimed by nature- what “remains when the process of modernisation has run its course”[1]. A landscape mute of further information is suggested as the negative space that expands between the precise outlines of bodies and objects as they appear in the work. This stretch of land is fused with those of literature, from The Waves by Virginia Woolf and Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig, where spatial intensity is perceived in solitude or collectively.
The architectural features in the works resemble structures in Western Medieval and Japanese painting where the body is simultaneously confined and exposed. The snake, whose body interacts with space like the lightwaves on obstacles, appears in the works through the mythological element of Medusa as well as via waveform elements throughout the exhibition; the S-shape of a chaise-longue where a pile of broken glass found on the shore reflects light, metal water hoses shape a Medusa’s raft, a line of blood streams from a cut on a leg.
Rallou Panagiotou lives in Glasgow and Athens. Recent solo exhibitions include “Body Panels Mirrors Lights”, Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Athens; “Outtakes and Indicators”, Galleri Riis, Oslo; “Pocket Microclimate”, City of Athens Exhibition Centre, Athens; “Two-hander”, Signal, Malmö; “Incorporeal Bundles”, Bernier/Eliades, Athens; “ProtoCopies”, Glasgow International; “Kalypso Volume II”, Radio Athènes, Athens; “Between Shampoo and Snakes”, Ibid., Los Angeles. She has participated in group exhibitions at Tate Britain, Haus 21, Foundation Villa Datris, Palais de Tokyo, PAC Milan, Glasgow International, Deste Foundation, Museum of Cycladic Art, et al.