Subterranean Sun

Join us at Delfina Foundation for Subterranean Sun: an “underground” open studio presenting work-in-progress from Petros Moris’s residency.

Subterranean Sun is an open studio installation stemming from Petros’s ongoing interest in the material and mythological manifestations of underground space as the origin of cultural pasts and technological futures.

As the artist comes to the end of his re-commenced residency (originally interrupted by the pandemic in March 2020), Petros takes an evening to share a selection of outcomes and works-in-progress from the research he conducted over his time at Delfina Foundation, which started from London’s histories of subterranean colonisation, industrial revolution and computational automation, and then re-focused on his local context of Athens.

This new body of work presented in Subterranean Sun takes the form of a series of solar intaglio etchings, a prototype of an algorithmically generated text-based work presented on-screen, a 3D animation based on the photogrammetric scans of a quarry in Greece, and a helioseismological soundscape.

Developed under the radiation of the Greek sun, and printed in London during Petros’s residency, the solar intaglio etchings derive from algorithmic machine-learning mutations performed on Petros’s own photographic archives of the animal-resembling sculptures which used to inhabit the ancient Kerameikos cemetery in Athens as the protectors of the threshold between the underworld and the life above.

Brought into dialogue with the etching is a prototype version of the text-based work Harvest. Using a similar algorithmic logic of machinic prediction it generates an endless stream of abstract “oracles”; texts of a synthetic language left to contingent human interpretation.

Reflecting back to the earthly materiality of the Kerameikos marble sculptures, the 3D-animated video Quarry Time (Ghost) unfolds as a negative image rendering of a haunted geological landscape, re-modeled after old photogrammetric scans of a marble quarry located between Athens and the artist’s hometown, Lamia.

Closing the loop between the celestial and the subterranean, the helioseismological soundscape will permeate Delfina’s underground space, reintroducing the cosmic presence of the sun through a year-long recording of solar oscillations, translated into an audible hum.

COVID-19

Due to the ongoing pandemic we request all guests do a lateral flow test before attending and we require face masks to be worn while in the open studio installation. Refreshments will be served on the ground floor.

Resident Petros Moris shares works-in-progress