The ATHENS PRINTMAKING CENTER – PANDOLFINI & SIATERLI C.N.P.P. presents the group exhibition “Mark and Trace” at the ETCH INK art space from November 20 to December 19, 2026.

Centering on the concept of personal mark-making and trace as an artistic identity and a medium of expression, this new group exhibition features printmaking artworks of the associates and students of the Athens Printmaking Center, resulting from months of creative research and personal exploration. In the realm of printmaking, mark-making transcends the boundaries of words: engraving, line density, and inking upon the matrix surface transform into a personal vocabulary. The exhibition highlights the printmaking process not merely as a technique, but as an authentic act of capturing each creator’s unique voice and perspective on paper.

Through experimentation with materials and forms, the works explore artistic marks as a stratigraphy of memory, a material imprint, a personal vocabulary, and a lived experience, transitioning from spontaneous gesture to disciplined printing. The artists compose personal alphabets, inviting the public into a dialogue where trace, gesture, and form construct an autonomous material universe, as well as a profound artistic statement where matter converses with memory and personal experience.

Eleni Anagnostou, the youngest artist in the exhibition, explores the human form through a series of portraits of real and fictional figures. Demonstrating remarkable draughtsmanship alongside etching and aquatint, she transforms her subjects into narrative protagonists, delivering a fresh, personal study on form.

Through an intuitive approach of overlapping etching and aquatint layers, Judy Attwood renders botanical and natural forms into atmospheric, dreamlike compositions. The accumulation of marks and the manipulation of light upon the matrix function as an artistic inscription of memory and time, where the act of etching itself preserves the trace of a moment that has passed.

Through a series of photogravures, Stella Vardaki captures our innate emotional need to leave our mark on the world. Snow, sand, and the weathered textures of the urban landscape become living canvases where human passage is imprinted, only to be ultimately surrendered to time and decay. These ephemeral traces serve as a reminder of our presence and, at the same time, of the poetic beauty of our transience.

Approaching the metal surface as a site of accumulated memory, Sofia Glampedaki handles acid, time, and light through aquatint and the technique of mezzotint. Out of the plate’s deep darks emerges the female body in motion, dance, and extension, no longer a simple descriptive form, but a fragile yet indestructible trace seeking to imprint itself on space.

Through persistent, repetitive etchings and successive acid baths of the matrix using sugar-lift aquatint, Tania Drogossi dissects the structure of natural elements. In these landscapes, the materiality of earth and water transcends naturalistic representation into a psychological realm, where human presence is subtly introduced through its shadow as an underlying trace of existence in space.

Through a continuous process of search and recurrent transformations, Katerina Exarchopoulou treats mark-making as the generating force of her visual world. In her copperplate engravings, trace is transmuted into shape, body, and ultimately space, condensing the bold line-mark into an open, evolving visual language that carries the memory of previous incisions.

In Theodosia Papadopoulou’s work, nature, memory, and decay serve as the departure point for an ongoing oscillation between the figurative and the abstract. Leaf imprints, abstract forms rendered via chine-collé, and torn manuscripts signify the marks of time and human presence, establishing a quiet dialogue between matter and form.

Efi Seitanidou attempts the transmutation of strict mathematical logic into a new, poetic language. Through line etching, erasure, and subtle interventions of gold leaf over typographic structures, she shapes a personal system of signs where revealed fragments of words become a field of imagination and artistic inquiry.

Taking the genre of still life as her starting point, Maria Fragkopanagou articulates the visual space through a clean, unpretentious, and deliberate mark-making. Leveraging the subtle tonal shifts and precise line-work of etching, her compositions present objects with clarity and poetic grace, giving form to their essential presence.

The exhibition is held under the auspices and with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture.

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ETCH INK art space
16 Argyroupoleos str., Lycabettus, 114 71, Athens, Greece
Opening: Friday 20 November, 18:30 – 22:30
Duration: 20 November – 19 December 2026
Opening days & hours:
Wednesday – Thursday – Friday 18.00 – 21.00 & Saturday 11.00 – 15.00
Info | [email protected] | www.athens-printmaking.com