Was nun? (And now what?)

Crux Galerie presents the solo exhibition of Vangelis Gokas, titled Was nun? (And now what?). Vangelis Gokas’s painting unfolds at the threshold between gesture and silence, between the visible and the suggestive. The question posed by the title functions as an existential pause and an opening toward doubt, fragility, and trust in the painting process. Was nun? does not seek resolution. Ιt suspends certainty and shifts both the act of painting and the act of viewing toward an ongoing process of waiting.

The forms and surfaces of the works are shaped through layers of color, within a continuous engagement that preserves traces of action and hesitation. The impasses of painting are not experienced as stasis, but as fields of testing, where action confronts its limits and only momentarily exceeds them.

Within this framework, a fragile invocation of hope emerges, never becoming a promise. Vangelis Gokas’s painting does not seek to impose itself, but to invite an experience of contemplation, where the gaze learns to listen.

Vangelis Gokas was born in Corinth in 1969. He studied at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts of the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1988-1994) and at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona (1995-1997). In 2006 he completed his postgraduate studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

In 2021 he presented his major solo exhibition “Omnia Caritatis”, curated by Christoforos Marinos at the Athens Municipal Gallery. In 2025 he participated to the major exhibition The King is Naked, together with Ilias Papailiakis and Vassilis Vassilakakis, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.

His work has also been featured in further exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including: Portals/ Neon (2021).”Theorems”, Union of Greek Art Critics, AICA Hellas, EMST (2018); 3rd Athens Biennale “MONODROME” (2011) and “In the present tense: Young Greek artists”, EMST (2007).

His works can be found in museums and important private collections in Greece and abroad, including the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. Since 2011 he has been professor and dean at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina. He lives and works in Ioannina.