ATHENS.- Kalfayan Galleries presents the solo exhibition of Kalos&Klio, titled “The World Awaits You As A Garden”.
With their new series of works, which consists of a 3D printed sculpture and handwoven rugs, the artistic duo from Thessaloniki redefines the world as a garden that flourishes through care, vigilance, and unity among its caretakers. In the exhibition, as the artist remark “democracy unfolds like a garden: not a static landscape, but a living ecosystem, a liminal realm acting as a threshold where public and private spheres intersect and transform each other, where individual beliefs meet collective dialogue”. Directly referring to the symbolic role of the garden was also the recent presentation of the work ‘The Keeper of the Garden’ (recreation of the eponymous carpet: 3-D Animation, video projection, transparent LED installation) at Pedion tou Areos Park, commissioned by Onassis Stegi for the exhibition Plásmata 3 (2025).
Dora Vassilakou writes about the exhibition:
The third exhibition by the artistic duo Kalos&Klio at Kalfayan Galleries marks a mature evolution of their long-standing research into the art of handmade weaving and its role as a conduit for collective memory, cultural transmission, and political reflection. The exhibition title alludes to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Inspired by the text’s allegory, Kalos&Klio present handwoven rugs and a 3D-printed sculpture, highlighting the symbolic link between the garden and democracy.
Building on the idea of weaving and its connection to democracy, as developed in their previous body of work (On the Tapis | Weaves Of Democracy, 2020), Kalos&Klio deepen their exploration of a visual language rooted in nature, ancient myths, ancestral symbols, archetypal motifs, and digital forms. These elements traverse geographies and temporalities in a kaleidoscopic way, illuminating the tensions, contradictions, and fragilities of the democratic experience today.
The exhibition presents a new series of hand-knotted rugs, in which a rich cosmology of symbols and cultures is harmoniously combined. Birds, blooming flowers, water, and stars; geometric shapes and calligraphic elements; mystical and apotropaic symbols from Asian and American cultures coexist with contemporary imagery that surrounds us: military aircraft, missiles, augmented reality visuals, internet icons, and electronic symbols of geolocation and connectivity. Together, these elements form layered narratives addressing both timeless and urgent concerns in a world in constant transition: population migrations, ecological crises, exclusionary politics, notions of progress in relation to consumption, and the non-negotiable need to protect the rights of human and non-human life.
Like visual manuscripts, the handwoven works of Kalos&Klio invite you to decode them. Dense information, structured complexity, and repetition lead you into rhythms and circular structures, where a labyrinthine narrative unfolds as you surrender to the colorful monumentality and the mesmerizing allure of the material itself.
Kalos & Klio (Klio Tantalidis and Christos Kalos) is a Thessaloniki-based Greek artist duo collaborating since 2005 as “Two People - One Artist”, known for blending traditional craftsmanship with cutting edge digital media to explore pressing socio-political themes. Klio Tantalidis holds an MFA, in Digital Arts, full scholarship, The University of Chicago, USA, an MA, Printmaking, Governors’ State University, Chicago, USA and a BFA, Painting, summa cum laude, Hanze University, Groningen, NL. Christos Kalos has a BA in photography, ESP, School of Photography, Thessaloniki, GR and studied painting at Boston College UK.
Their multidisciplinary practice spans from prints, textiles, handwoven carpets to digital photography, 3D-printed sculptures, installations, augmented reality (AR), and 3D animation, delving into themes of human rights, war, migration, and democratic struggles. Research-driven and focused on reviving traditional motifs from East and West in pop culture, their work reimagines traditional iconography to examine global interconnectedness, revealing the enduring power of ancestral symbols to speak to contemporary realities.
Their work has been featured in exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Recent exhibitions include: Plásmata 3, Onassis Stegi, Pedion Areos, Athens (2025); “Genius Loci - Lessons of History”, Museum Schlosspark, Romerhalle, Bad Kreuznach, Germany (2025); “Technofetishism - Whip it into shape!”, MOMus-Experimental Centre for the Arts, Thessaloniki (2025); "DIE VERHÄLTNISSE ZUM TANZEN BRINGEN - 50 Jahre Kemnade International”, Bochum, Germany (2024); “The Event of a Thread”, MOMuS- Experimental Centre for the Arts, Thessaloniki, (2022). Kalos&Klio are represented by Kalfayan Galleries.
