ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS - SOFTWALKS

SOFTWALKS BY ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS
20 January to 21 February

Softwalks is the first institutional solo exhibition in Norway by Andreas Angelidakis. The artist is known for his work exploring the intersection between art, architecture and design.

Andreas Angelidakis is an architect who never built. Architecture in his work becomes an image with its own agency and will. It comments on the cumulation, movement and ruination that itself willingly and unwillingly creates, thereby turning into soft material. The physical and digital realms meet through usage of software and hardware in video and sculptural work. By combining these elements, Angelidakis has created a site-specific installation within the urban setting of Oslo’s city center. Fotogalleriet is approached as a point of departure, questioning what the institution represents: initially a space exclusively dedicated to photography, Fotogalleriet transforms from a static take to a moving image, embracing its physical and digital surroundings.

Over the course of last year, our formerly separated notion of the self—our presumed and unquestioned access to physical spaces—has ultimately merged into a frame of mind where social life and travel moved into a “new somewhere”: an endless repetition of illusions. Softwalks traverses and materializes the domesticated ruins; ruins that can live in the interior space, and with which you can play. They never break because they are soft. Sometimes soft stays for queer; therefore these ruins queer the space. Angelidakis invites us to invert our traditional roles and perspectives of seating and spectating through experimentation with multiple non-linear sequences; these in-between spaces lure us into the psychedelic, the realm in which to trip and explore these different domains of knowledge and cultures.

*The exhibition opens its doors on Wednesday 20 January from 14: 00-20: 00 and will be on view until 21 February 2021 following ordinary opening hours. In line with local guidelines for infection control and prevention of Covid-19, no opening event will be held and the number of visitors who can stay in the viewing rooms at the same time is extremely limited. To avoid queues, we encourage visitors to see the exhibition during the entire exhibition period. More information about the Oslo Municipality’s current health regulations are available here.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
A Greek-Norwegian citizen, Andreas Angelidakis was born in 1968 and lives and works in Athens. Trained as an architect, he often switches roles between artist, curator, architect and teacher. His work has been shown in major institutions such as the Jeu de Paume (Paris, France) and the Turner Contemporary (Margate, United Kingdom), and presented at numerous periodic exhibitions including the Berlin Biennale (2014), documenta 14 (2017) and Bergen Assembly (2019). His work has entered many public collections including those of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens, Greece) and of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago IL, USA). Angelidakis utilizes his background in architecture to develop a visual practice using the web as a means to understand community as located in the real space. Conceiving architecture as a source of affect, he approaches it as if it were a moving flux in a constant evolution. The artist considers space as a programmable device that must be adapted to different needs. Angelidakis holds a MA in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University.