Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery

Eng Ελ
Ελ

David Sampethai

David Sampethai is a Greek artist based in Athens. He studied Painting & Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art.  With painting at the core of his practice, Sampethai explores different ways of story-telling through the pairing of visual, written and musical/sound works. Upon graduation in 2012 he was chosen by the Royal Scottish Academy to exhibit at their 2013 New Contemporaries exhibition. His multimedia drawing installation Interzoned in collaboration with electronic music producer Benjha (Other People) won the Stevenston Painter of Merit Award.
An extended version of this installation constituted his first solo exhibition Interzoned at Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery in Athens (December 2013-February 2014).  In 2015 he collaborated with fellow gallery artist Antonakis Christodoulou on Two Johns, an exhibition about a film not yet made. Its content was developed through paintings, drawings, writing, archive photographs and a soundtrack composed by the artist in collaboration with musicians Benjha and Irene Lyssari. The show was reviewed on ARTFORUM by Stephanie Bailey.
In 2017, he conceptualised and co-curated The Library Show at Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery. For its duration, the gallery was transformed into an artist book library, hosting a comprehensive and very diverse collection of artist books. His solo exhibition Key to the Kuffs followed up later in the year, consisting of a series of small gouache and ink diptych paintings and a large painting.  The title of the exhibition carried a dual meaning, that of the guard that locks with a key and that of the guarding angel who uses it to unlock and set free.  Through a fragmented narrative, various themes revolving around the title’s idea and modern man’s existential anxieties were explored.