The Breeder
Paris Intenationale

The Breeder brings together works by Eleni Pitari-Pangalou (1905–1995) and Kostis Velonis (b. 1968) through a shared concern with figuration as a site of projection, ritual, and instability.

Their dialogue unfolds through circularity, repetition, and staged presence. Pitari-Pangalou’s cosmic rituals meet Velonis’ itinerant performers, proposing forms of collective enactment where meaning is continuously rehearsed. Light—whether metaphysical core or theatrical spotlight—structures this encounter.

The exhibition proposes a continuity across generations, where modernist inwardness and contemporary precariousness converge into a theater of being—mystical, comic, and human.

Born in Istanbul in 1905 into a Greek diaspora family, Pitari-Pangalou grew up surrounded by art and travel. After relocating to Athens following the Asia Minor Catastrophe, she enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in 1926—an uncommon path for a woman—and was among its first female students. Her apprenticeship with Konstantinos Parthenis from 1929 shaped a language balancing symbolism, expressionism, and a departure from formal representation.

Kostis Velonis, by contrast, stages a fragile theatrical world of makeshift structures and wandering performers. Drawing on amateur theatre, circus, and religious allegory, his figures embody a poetics of failure, where clumsiness becomes a mode of knowledge. His “environmental slapstick” frames the human condition as unstable performance, between aspiration and collapse.

In parallel for Special Project Parcours, The Breeder presents Georgia Sagri, Sitting with my Breath II (2024). The work transforms the familiar form of a public bench into a site of encounter, attentiveness, and shared experience. Cast iron and timber are interrupted by a monumental hand-blown glass form resembling an expanded breath, subtly altering the body’s habitual relationship to an object designed for rest. Rather than preventing use, the sculpture invites visitors to slow down, negotiate their position, and become conscious of breathing as both a physical necessity and a shared condition.

Originally commissioned for KÖLNSKULPTUR #11: Body Manoeuvres, curated by Nikola Dietrich (2024-2026), the work was conceived for sustained interaction in public space. At Paris Internationale, installed within the exhibition parcours, it offers a moment of suspension amid the rhythm of the fair. Extending Sagri’s exploration of the body as a political and social space, the work proposes breath as a shared commons, connecting strangers through the simple gesture of sitting together.