ATHENS.- Unreal, surreal, but ultimately real, Plásmata 3, the wide-ranging exhibition by Onassis Stegi in Athens’ Pedion tou Areos park, creates a world where the boundaries between reality and illusion dissolve and the everyday becomes magical. For 20 nights, 31 points with works by Greek and international artists, more than 70 DJ sets and music producers, over 15 talks, 13 screenings of short and feature films and 4 kiosks with flavors form the diverse communities of the neighborhood will spread across the park like a midsummer night’s dream. These works converse with our daily lives and give space to the analog, the physical, and the imaginary.

From 27 May to 15 June, Onassis Stegi presents the world of “Plásmata” – meaning creatures in Greek. Rather than following the main pathways of the park, Plásmata 3 spreads throughout Pedion tou Areos, inviting us into the park at night to explore its groves and gardens and discover a new topography that emerges among the flowerbeds, on the park’s margins and also at its very core.

The exhibition’s artworks are rooted in the park. New commissions, as well as artworks from the Onassis Collection, fresh projects by artists from the ONX (Onassis Digital Culture Incubator) and AiR artists’ residency programs, as well as others shown in Greece for the first time, all come together to weave this year’s Plásmata. Twenty-five artists from diverse fields create an unconventional treasure hunt that blends truth and illusion.

Plásmata 3 highlights the celebratory and symbiotic nature of a public space festival. In the same way that each artwork situated in the park seems to sprout from it, a series of parallel activities—such as music events, innovation workshops with local businesses and neighborhood groups, meals, radio broadcasts, talks, and film screenings—form the backbone of this year’s Plásmata.

Afroditi Panagiotakou, Artistic Director of the Onassis Foundation comments: “We are searching for new ways to enjoy the freedom of public space, to revel in encounters with strangers brought together by a chance walk or a mutual desire to discover Plásmata. A small celebration and an ode to art, and the soothing power of simply being together. Yes, we are in search of the sweet lie that beauty, surprise, humour, and—ultimately—art can tell.”

The surreal is embedded in the very fabric of the park at night: a place that seems natural yet is a human construction. Among the hybrid works—many of which are part of the Onassis Collection—are strange totems charged with hints of spiritualism, mythical creatures, ancient column-pillows you can lie on comfortably, monuments made from shattered Athenian pavement marble, bodies caught between falling and ascending a staircase to nowhere, glass flowers lit by the embrace of two people, Amazons on motorcycles, endlessly spinning seashells echoing dripping water, familiar yet uncanny beings emerging from flowerbeds.

Plásmata 3 is an invitation to play—to see the world around us differently. Like in the cinema of David Lynch, the uncanny emerges from the familiar, and the dreamlike feels like memory. What is the Ministry of Anarchaeology? Is that owl next to the statue of Athena really moving? Why are there sheep from Lebanon in the park? Could the spirit of the park bring us together? Do the seashells sing?

Plásmata 3 doesn’t divide art into digital and analog. Instead, it emphasizes art’s natural evolution through time: from shadow puppetry to projection mapping, from painting to film, from video art to contemporary digital and post-digital expression. Here, technology is a tool, not the goal. The artists don’t serve artificial intelligence—they use it, transform it, subvert it, surpass it. With imagination as their primary weapon, they create new narratives that do not submit to algorithms but question them, reinvent them, and drive them mad.

Artistic Director – Curator: Afroditi Panagiotakou
Executive Director: Dimitris Theodoropoulos
General Manager: Prodromos Tsiavos
Exhibition Design: Loukas Bakas