The Breeder is pleased to present Ireland Wisdom's first solo show in Athens following her two months' residency at The Breeder Open Studio, an initiative that offers time to the artist and the viewer to interact with each other and to engage in substantial ways. During this time Wisdom completed a body of work emphatically imbued with her experience as an artist living and working in Athens, greatly influenced by Greek mythology and brought to life through a lens of contemporaneity.

The show revolves around the raw emotions and functions of human beings, who are depicted as semi gods or mythological creatures, unapologetically sensual and brutally real. The main piece of the exhibition, "Panselinos", depicts Pan, the god of the wild who would be worshipped in natural settings and had the legs and the horns of a goat, in the company of a nymph who is comfortably laying nude in front of him, holding a knife between her legs, surrounded by fish as a reference to the Mediterranean diet as well as the natural act of eating. Through her compositions Wisdom creates a new mythology of primal action and rawness of instinct fully embedded in a seemingly comfortable naturalistic setting.

Wisdom pays homage to the 18th century European painting of still life subjects surrounding the larger pieces, while a series of charcoal drawings add to the whimsical ambience of the exhibition. The drawings, simpler and delicate, with a minimum amount of details, feel lighthearted while saying a story on their own.

The exhibition concludes with Wisdom's self-portraits, which add to the tradition of the grand masters and for the artist serve as witness to her own process of transformation throughout the last months. Her traveling to Greece, embarking on the experience of The Breeder Open Studio and encountering the Athenian landscape and its people has added up to a quite transformative and enriching year.

Read more about the exhibition here