Involution, Paraskevopoulou 13, Athens, GR, 2024
This exhibition is a meditation on the inhabitation of multiplicity: on modes of dissemination, occupation, and cohabitation
“Involution” is an ambitious and multifaceted exhibition that unites a dynamic group of artists working across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, video, and sound. Featuring both new commissions and existing works, the exhibition presents a rich dialogue between contemporary practices and themes. It includes works by, Elli Antoniou, Valerios Kaloutsis, Lito Kattou, Julian Komosa, Petros Moris, Thomas Van Noten, Sofia Dona, Roxane Revon, Johnna Sachpazis, Theo Triantafyllidis, and Lina Zedig.
The term “Involution” originates in mathematics, where f(f(x)) = x refers to a function that is its own inverse. This concept is rooted in symmetry and reversibility, suggesting a stable, predictable process. Yet, here, Involution departs from its mathematical roots, drawing instead on the philosophical frameworks of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. From the reversible, we move toward poetic complexity, critiquing linear thinking and fixed identities. Involution does not describe a linear or circular movement that returns to its origin; rather, it signals a process of differentiation and relationship-building that resists the idea of evolution or progress. In close alignment with the logic of rhizomatic multiplicity, it challenges hierarchical and teleological structures. In rhizomatic thought, there is no center, no fixed reference point. Instead, there are myriad, divergent connections, where each element evolves through its interactions with others. Involution, then, is not about return, but about integrating heterogeneous elements into an ongoing, dynamic becoming.
The works echo this shift, transforming the inversion of “evolution” into “revolution”—both as transformation and upheaval. It becomes a process that highlights experimental connections and transformations, underscoring the potential for rupture and reinvention. Becoming is involutionary: becoming animal, becoming machine, becoming insect, becoming imperceptible, becoming molecular, becoming death, becoming escape. It represents a moving horizon of exchanges—a relationship in which the system of equations becomes a game, a continuous process of transformation. Teleological order and immutable identities give way to the fluidity of multiple, co-existing becomings. Involution is the evolution between heterogeneities, a transmission that is a creative process rather than a succession of inherited forms.
This exhibition is a meditation on the inhabitation of multiplicity: on modes of dissemination, occupation, and cohabitation. It engages with forms—human and non-human, vertebrate and invertebrate, animal, plant—that are not necessarily distinct from one another. It explores forms that lose their volume and become surfaces, and surfaces that maintain, almost animistically, the potential for subterranean (anti)action. Matter here is not approached devoid of sensation, motion, or life. The exhibition questions the political conceptualization of the fragile divide between the living and the non-living. It reopens the political potential of imagination, of speculation through poetry, while re-reading art history and archives askew. Rather than finding patterns of evolution between generations or geographical locations, it provides space for the branching of ideas and symbiotic gestures.
Curated by: Panos Giannikopoulos
Graphic Design: Bend.gr
With the financial support and under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture
Photographer & Lighting Design: Nysos Vasilopoulos
Organized and produced by: Wild Reeds