Miltos Skouras’ retrospective exhibition, titled “In Between the Visible. Paintings 1983–2026,” is on view at the City of Athens Art Gallery from October 22 through November 22, 2026, with the support of the City of Athens Organization for Culture, Sports, and Youth. Curated by art historian Yannis Bolis, the exhibition features 165 works spanning more than four decades of painting. Among them are works being exhibited to the public for the first time, highlighting different milestones and facets of the artist’s creative journey.

Why “In Between the Visible”? What is happening in Miltos Skouras’s images, and why does what we see never remain completely static?

Taking these questions as its starting point, the exhibition traces the artist’s ongoing exploration of the image, human presence, and the multiple versions of reality.

Miltos Skouras’s artistic career has taken shape within an international context, where painting intersects with the photographic image, fashion, design, advertising, and popular culture. His graduation from the School of Architecture in Milan in 1979, his studies in semiotics and communication at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, his experience in New York, and his engagement with graphic novels and magazines have shaped a complex visual education. As Maria Tsantsanoglou points out, his artistic journey “stems from an international, cosmopolitan experience of the image and returns to Greece without severing ties with it.”

In 1983, he published his first work in the French magazine Métal Hurlant, followed by publications in the American magazine Heavy Metal and the Italian magazine Alter. For more than a decade, in Milan, Paris, and New York, he worked on the relationship between image and text, alongside his work in graphic design, advertising, and fashion.

At the heart of the exhibition, a room functions as a laboratory of the gaze: Skoura’s early works, graphic novels, fashion, magazines, and the “Mossaikon” section reveal his journey from applied imagery toward a form of painting open to narrative. As Maria Tsantsanoglou observes, “In his works, exceptional technical precision does not merely seek to create the illusion of reality. On the contrary, it often undermines it.”

In his painting, as exhibition curator Yannis Bolis points out: “His compositions give the impression of being frozen in time, of balancing on the cusp of a narrative—a story in which we are unaware of what has come before and what is to follow —images of an in-between world on the border between reality, dream, and imagination, between truth and falsehood.”

In “Black & White Stories“, photorealistic precision fades as the viewer gets closer, revealing the canvas, the color, and the traces of the painting process. These “painting-like single frames,” as the artist himself describes them, combine image and text without one explaining the other, keeping the narrative open.

In “Border Line“, the large black-and-white image and the smaller color compositions create a space between the real and the imaginary. The horizon line does not merely separate the sea from the sky; it simultaneously becomes the boundary between different interpretive possibilities.

In the “Landscape” section, the small and large images—the large-scale color landscapes—engage in a dialogue with smaller black-and-white compositions. The small image complements and reframes the large one: an object or a material remnant shifts the initial interpretation, revealing the human presence through its absence.

In “Attimo Fuggente“, by contrast, the blurring of the human form conveys in the painting a sense of an elusive presence and a moment that remains in transition.

The series “Supermarket Workers” holds a special place. The 48 black-and-white portraits are arranged in successive rows, forming a unified grid of images. The repetition initially suggests a sense of homogeneity, but as the gaze moves from face to face, the individuality of each worker reemerges. In *Before 8 a.m.*, the painting focuses on the usually unseen moments that precede the opening of a supermarket.

As Katerina Koskina notes: “Through the photographic quality of the image, the painting’s materiality, and its archival dimension, she presents them in a different context of visibility, elevating them to ‘heroes’ of everyday life, reminding us that artistic creation can transform the ordinary and the seemingly anonymous into a work of art.”

In the “Family” section, three portraits form a group in which the relationships between them change depending on their arrangement. The meaning no longer lies exclusively in each individual image but is also generated in the space between them.

From his earliest illustrated narratives to his most recent painterly compositions, Miltos Skouras revisits the relationship between image and reality, between presence and absence, between what we recognize immediately and what is revealed only upon a second glance. As Yannis Bolis notes, the artist seeks “to convey more of what is absent than of what is depicted.”

The “betwen of the visible” lies precisely there: in the gap between initial recognition and what becomes visible when we persist in looking.

Catalogue and Parallel Activities

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated bilingual catalog (Greek-English), published by Nisos Publications, which includes texts by Yannis Bolis, Maria Tsantsanoglou, Katerina Koskina, Tasos Sakellaropoulos, and Eugenia Iskou.

The catalog launch, attended by the authors, will take place on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at 7:00 p.m., at the Athens Municipal Art Gallery, and will be accompanied by a discussion about Miltos Skouras’s work and artistic journey.

Guided tours with the artist will take place on Saturday, October 24 and 31, and November 7 and 14, 2026, at 1:00 p.m.

As part of the exhibition, guided tours for specific audiences will be organized by appointment.

The program of accompanying events will also include a special guided tour led by art historian Yannis Bolis, the exhibition’s curator. The date will be announced shortly.

The exhibition’s closing event will take place on Saturday, November 21, 2026, in the presence of the artist, and the exhibition will remain open through Sunday, November 22, 2026.

Exhibition Information

Curator: Yannis Bolis
co-curator: Evgenia Iskou

Opening: 22 October 2026
Exhibition Duration: 22 October-22 November 2026

City of Athens Art Gallery: Leonidou and Myllerou, Metaxourgion, tel.: 210 5202420, 210 5202421
Opening Hours: Tuesday– Saturday 10:00-19:00, Sunday 10:00 – 16:00, Mondays : closed
Admission is free