SOFTWALKS

Andreas Angelidakis
Architecture & Photography From 20.01.2022 To 18.04.2021

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 inbetween
spaces lure us into the psychedelic, the realm in which to trip and explore these different
domains of knowledge and cultures.

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.

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.