Andreas Angelidakis: Softwalks

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. 

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.

About Fotogalleriet
Fotogalleriet was founded in a basement in 1977 by—among others—renowned artists Dag Alveng and Tom Sandberg as the first institution of its kind for hothousing cutting-edge photographic practices in Norway. Ever since, Fotogalleriet has been dedicated to exhibiting local and international art practices, and analysing the rapidly expanding nature of a field unrestricted by technological and aesthetic shifts. Through its commitment to research and engagement with artists, Fotogalleriet is a leading institution within the field of image making. Its current Artistic Director is Antonio Cataldo.

Acknowledgements
Fotogalleriet's principal operating support is provided by The Norwegian Royal Ministry of Culture; additional operational funding comes from the Norwegian Photographic Fund (Nofofo), and in part from the Oslo Municipality. The exhibition Softwalks has been made possible with the additional support from The Arts Council Norway.

For press enquiries: presse@fotogalleriet.no

*Please note that opening times might be subject to change to accommodate possible developments with regards to Norway's COVID-19 regulations. For up-to-date information on the precise opening hours, we kindly refer you to our website.*