‘I’m very serious with my humor’: juergen teller brings his raw vision to onassis ready, athens

Juergen Teller launches ‘You Are Invited’ at Onassis Ready, athens

Juergen Teller opens a new chapter in his career, and in Athens’s cultural infrastructure, with ‘you are invited’, the inaugural exhibition at Onassis Ready, a recently transformed former plastics factory in the industrial district of Agios Ioannis Rentis, Athens, designed by 6a architects under Tom Emerson. Running until December 30th, 2025, the exhibition marks Teller’s most comprehensive solo presentation in Greece to date. designboom attended the press preview of the show, where the artist and his partner and collaborator, Dovile Drizyte, unveil a constellation of photographs, videos, and installations that span three decades of work.

Teller’s work balances irony with tenderness and confession with critique. ‘Life is tragic and funny,’ he says. ‘And I’m very serious with my humor.’ His photographs, often oscillating between the sacred and the absurd, explore the everyday as a site of revelation. They include portraits of his partner and their daughter, moments of domestic vulnerability, and encounters that test the boundaries between art, life, and belief. At its core, the show is what Teller describes as ‘a positive invitation — to look, to feel, to think, to dream.’ 

mid-career survey explores intimacy, celebrity, and the political

Conceived and curated by Teller and Drizyte, ‘you are invited’ unfolds as a mid-career retrospective that brings together emblematic portraits, from Iggy Pop and Kate Moss to Charlotte Rampling and Alexander Skarsgård,  alongside still lifes, self-portraits, and new commissions that reveal a more contemplative dimension to Teller’s practice. Among the new works are his photographs of Pope Francis visiting a women’s prison during the 2024 Venice Biennale, and his documentation of Auschwitz for the 80th anniversary of its liberation.

‘I chose the title as something positive — an invitation to look, to feel, to dream,’ Teller shares. ‘It’s vital that the exhibition responds to Athens, to this building, to this culture. I don’t want to have a bunch of framed photographs which are exactly the same and travel to all the different cities. That’s not my way of working — that would be totally boring for me. I want to be excited myself.’

a raw space for artistic freedom

Set within the former KOCH plastics plant, Onassis Ready extends over 3,700 square meters designed by Tom Emerson of 6a architects. The exhibition architecture preserves the raw materiality of the factory, concrete floors, exposed beams, and industrial light, creating an environment that mirrors Teller’s own visual language of imperfection and tactility. ‘For me, photographs are objects,’ he notes. ‘I touch them, move them by hand before they ever reach a computer.’

Works are placed throughout the industrial shell in direct response to its spatial rhythms, cables, windows, and columns become part of the scenography. ‘You have to feel the room,’ Teller explains. ‘People will be surprised, because you move from the first images my father took of me as a baby, to my father’s suicide, to my work with Dovile and my family life. Inside is very much the heartbeat of my life.’

The opening of Onassis Ready signals a significant expansion for the Onassis Foundation, positioning the venue as a hybrid laboratory for art, performance, and post-digital practice. Beyond its exhibition spaces, it hosts studios, editing rooms, green screens, AI workstations, and rehearsal areas for artists supported through the ONX program — a cross-continental initiative connecting Athens and New York.

from the everyday to the unfiltered

Teller’s images often mix the grotesque with tenderness, which Afroditi Panagiotakou, Artistic Director of the Onassis Foundation, describes as ‘where the political clashes with the intimate, where raw, unfiltered emotion meets the quiet strength and vulnerability of family.’ The works on view are part of a constellation of lived experiences, moments of vulnerability and provocation that invite viewers into a space of friction and reflection. Teller’s recent output, including photographs exploring fertility, fatherhood, and the everyday routines of domestic life, makes visible a turn toward embodied storytelling.

By situating ‘you are invited’ within Onassis Ready, a venue intentionally placed outside central Athens, the Onassis Foundation is making a statement about where and how art should circulate, expanding the notion of accessibility, and investing in long-term support for artists through its ONX program, which is based in both Athens and New York.

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project info:

name: you are invited

artist: Juergen Teller

location: Onassis Ready, Strati Tsirka 2, Agios Ioannis Rentis, Athens, Greece

curators: Juergen Teller & Dovile Drizyte

dates: October 19th – December 30th, 2025

exhibition manager: Josselin Merazguia (Juergen Teller Studio)

commissioned & produced by: Onassis Culture