Plásmata 3: An Art Trail Where Reality Melts Into Illusion – Onassis Stegi

Athens: Plásmata 3 ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’ Pedion tou Areos Park has unveiled a wide-ranging exhibition backed by Onassis Stegi. This year’s edition becomes a stage for the uncanny, the poetic, and the gloriously ambiguous as Plásmata 3 transforms the familiar into the fantastical. For twenty nights, the park is alive with 25 works that blur the edges of what we know—or think we know—about the world around us.

“We move through cities, through parks, through lives, assuming the ground beneath us is solid. But what if it isn’t?” says curator Afroditi Panagiotakou. “What if the trees whisper secrets, the shadows play tricks, and the sculptures watching from the flowerbeds have always been there, waiting for us to notice?” she added. Plásmata—meaning creatures in Greek—are not invaders but revelations, emerging from the landscape as if they’ve always belonged.

From May 27 to June 15, Pedion tou Areos is no longer just a park. It’s a living exhibition where the natural and the artificial entwine, where the ordinary becomes mythic. Forget the well-trodden paths—Plásmata 3 lures visitors into hidden groves, forgotten corners, and the park’s beating heart, where new topographies unfold. Here, the works don’t just occupy space; they grow from it, as much a part of the earth as the roots beneath them.

This year’s edition is a blending of the unexpected: new commissions, pieces from the Onassis Stegi Collection, projects by artists from the ONX incubator and AiR residency, alongside mid-career artists and works never before seen in Greece. Together, they form a treasure hunt where reality is the prize—or perhaps the illusion.

Plásmata 3 is far more than an exhibition. It’s a celebration of public space as a living, breathing entity. Music drifts between the trees, workshops hum with local voices, meals are shared under the open sky, and film screenings flicker like fireflies in the dark. The park isn’t just a backdrop; with David LaChapelle-style lighting, it’s a collaborator.

In an era obsessed with categorisation—digital vs. analogue, human vs. machine—Plásmata 3 dissolves the boundaries. Here, art is not divided but fluid, an unbroken lineage from shadow puppets flickering on cave walls to the spectral glow of projection mapping. Painting bleeds into film, video art mutates into post-digital phantasmagoria, and technology is neither saviour nor overlord—merely a brush in the artist’s hand.

This is not an exhibition that bows to algorithms. The artists of Plásmata 3 hack, haunt, and hijack artificial intelligence, bending it to their will. Their true medium. Pure, unfiltered imagination—the kind that short-circuits machine logic and births narratives no algorithm could predict.

But Plásmata 3 is more than a rebellion. It’s an invitation to play, to step into a world where the mundane becomes surreal. Like a Lynchian reverie, the familiar curdles into the uncanny. That owl perched near Athena’s statue—did it just turn its head? Why do Lebanese sheep graze in an Athenian park? And what, exactly, is the Ministry of Anarchaeogy?

The questions multiply, deliciously unanswerable—Golden Datsuns rain from the sky. Seashells hum lullabies. The park itself whispers, a living collaborator in this collective delirium. Would you like to become a bat? Here, even that might be possible.

This is art that refuses to sit still. It flickers at the edges of perception, half-remembered, half-dreamed. Lose yourself in it. The reality was overrated, anyway.

Culture lives where you least expect it – in sidewalk cracks, in midnight conversations, in the space between what is and what could be. At Onassis Culture, they don’t frame art -they set it loose. The Onassis Stegi stands as both anchor and compass, a place where visionaries and provocateurs crash together, tearing up blueprints to build something new from the pieces.

This isn’t just any old performance space; Stegi means “roof” – it shelters storms, not conformists. It’s where Greek artists and global voices spark conversations that burn through comfortable lies, tackling everything from democracy’s fractures to climate emergencies, from systemic racism to the queer revolution. Here, art doesn’t knock politely – it kicks down doors.

Onassis AiR rejects the residency rulebook entirely. This is where artists take control, where research becomes a form of rebellion, and where creative practice explodes within the confines of traditional institutions. Participants don’t cycle through – they plant flags and claim territory.

Stegi Radio transmits more than sound – it broadcasts resistance. This is where underground beats meet radical thought, where playlists become manifestos. When you tune in, you’re not a passive listener – you’re part of the movement.

The future? It’s already unfolding. Their YouTube channel stacks digital ammunition – concert films that rattle cages, documentaries that pull back curtains, and debates that refuse to play nice. Meanwhile, Onassis ONX equips artists like revolutionaries, blending bleeding-edge technology with pure creative defiance. Since launching in 2020, this program has been dismantling old media hierarchies and building something new and innovative in their place.

Exhibiting Artists:

1. Aias Kokkalis – Ares Awakening (2025)

2. Andreas Angelidakis – Anarchaeological Anaparastasis (2025)

3. Andreas Wannerstedt – Focus! (2024)

4. DIONYSIOS – Meditation on Time (2022–2025)

5. Efi Gousi – Tectonic Riders (2025)

6. Janis Rafa – Love me. Lick me. Forgive me. (2023–2024)

7. Jiabao Li, Matt McCorkle & Botao ‘Amber’ Hu – EchoVision (2024)

8. Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige – Where Is My Mind? (2020)

9. John Fitzgerald & Godfrey Reggio – The Vivid Unknown: CloudQatsi (2025)

10. Katerina Komianou – Heirlooms (2024–2025)

11. Kalos & Klio – The Keeper of the Garden (2025)

12. Manousos Manousakis – Neighbours (2025)

13. Maria Mavropoulou – The Sleight of the Machine (2025)

14. Martyna Marciniak – *Anatomy of Non-Fact. Chapter 1: AI Hyperrealism* (2024)

15. Moritz Simon Geist – Hard Times—Soft Sounds (2021)

16. Natalia Manta – Mother (2023)

17. Noemi Iglesias Barrios – The Falling City (2025)

18. Pierre-Christophe Gam – The Sanctuary of Dreams (2025)

19. Robert Wilson – Kool, Snowy Owl (Horizontal Blue) (2006)

20. The Callas (Lakis & Aris Ionas) – Punkthenon (2022) and Beware of the Dogs (2001)

21. The Yoann Bourgeois Art Company – Approach 17. Opening (2023)

22. William Kentridge – Shadow Procession (1999)

23. Ziad Antar – Tokyo Tonight (2004) and Metronome (2024)

Words Paul Carter Robinson Top Photo: Approach 17 Yoann Bourgeois 2023 “The unreachable suspension point” Relying on the Opening movement of Philip Glass’ “Glassworks,” “Approach 17” proposes a simplified take on existential trajectories, alternating between elevations and descents, with a staircase that leads nowhere. Temporal

Plásmata 3: 27.05 – 15.06.25 | Daily: 18:00–23:00 | Pedion tou Areos | Free admission Art – Music – Cinema – Performance – Talks – Food – Innovation Workshops

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Art Trail, Illusion, Onassis Stegi, Plásmata 3