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Exhibition – Teratarium – Evripidis Sabatis
In ancient Greek, teras means monster, sign, wonder, marvel, miracle, omen, or portent. Its plural is terata.
A terrarium is a closed, controlled space, often a fishbowl-style container, in which the conditions of a specific habitat are artificially recreated to create a small ecosystem inhabited by living beings.
In this first ceramics exhibition in Barcelona, Evripidis Sabatis (Athens, 1979) transforms Terranova into a Teratarium, an artificial ecosystem for his Terata.
We find beings that can be interpreted as monsters, omens of a strange future, wonders of a world that is simultaneously familiar and unusual. There are tangles of tentacles, marine forms, scaly textures, outstretched hands, mutated mobile phones, and sensual and terrifying orifices. These works reflect on a post-pandemic world, with climate collapse looming, fragile mental health, and the threat of armed conflict, raising questions about the commodification of terror, the banality of atrocity, and the pornography of the apocalypse. The grotesque and the horrifying merge with the beautiful, creating decorative objects for a turbo-capitalist world.
A publication designed by the Phantasia studio will be presented at the exhibition.