THE NEVER EVER LAND

Crux Galerie is pleased to host Fotini Poulia’s solo exhibition titled The Never Ever Land. The exhibition presents a segment of the latest series of paintings in which Fotini Poulia explores the unstable boundary between virtual imagery and lived reality. The paintings are based on stills from films, television series, and documentaries, photographed directly from a laptop screen. By isolating emotionally charged instants, the artist reconstructs images that function less as narratives and more as psychological landscapes.

The screens operate as tools of translation, allowing digital noise, colour distortion, and reduced clarity to become integral elements of the work. These altered images are transferred from the screen to the painted surface, creating a world that appears to be suspended in time. The works are made with oil on wood, emphasizing an extreme attention to technique.

The title was conceived during the period of lockdown, a moment of collective isolation that deeply shaped this body of work. At the same time, it alludes to the contradictory idea of Peter Pan’s Neverland: a utopian, imaginary place. Within the realm of spectacle, images increasingly replace direct experience, blurring the distinction between fiction and reality. Poulia’s paintings reflect this condition, revealing how contemporary emotional life is often mediated, borrowed, and re-lived through screens.

Fotini Poulia (b. 1971, Athens) lives and works in Athens. She studied painting at the Scuola di Belle Arti in Rome and at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1992–1998), from where she graduated with First Class Honors. She also studied at the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin through the Erasmus program.

Her work has been widely exhibited in Greece and internationally, with solo and group exhibitions in institutions, galleries, and art spaces, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) and the Petros and Marika Kythoniefs Foundation in Andros. She has participated in major art events including Art Athina, Back to Athens, and the Biennale of Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean in Rome.

Fotini Poulia has received multiple scholarships from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) for excellence in artistic presentation. Since 1995, she has been actively engaged in teaching, offering courses in drawing, painting, basic design principles, and visual perception in collaboration with various institutions and organisations.