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OFFICE AESTHETICS BY PAOLA JALILI
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7° 59' 1.7160'' N / 23° 43' 39.1404'' E. AT STATE’S EMBRACE
BY YORGOS APOSTOLOPOULOS
SEPTEMBER 5–28, 2025
Open Wed–Sun 1–6 PM
TWO EXHIBITIONS OPENING AT OKSASENKATU 11 GALLERY ON THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2026 at 5–8 PM
OFFICE AESTHETICS
BY PAOLA JALILI
Office Aesthetics is an artistic research project initiated in 2018 by Paola Jalili. It analyzes visual and textual representations of offices and other workspaces in the fields of architecture, design, pop culture, media, and theory. By observing, archiving, and utilizing these representations as a source for artistic work, Office Aesthetics reflects on how we conceive work, how we perfrom it, and how we value it. The project is driven by (ironic) humor and (genuine) aesthetic pleasure.
While office spaces might not be thought of as places where ceremonies are held, they are full of everyday ritual-like gestures. Repetition, redundancy, re-production, reiteration: performing the same tasks over and over. This repetitive aspect of work resonates too in the arts and cultural field: artistic production, but especially all its accompanying labor—such as administration and finance management, grant writing, self-curating, marketing and promotion—often feels like an endless loop of doing the same thing again and again, without enough time to stop, rest, reflect, or perfect.
Over the past seven years I have been collecting office supplies, stationary, and printed matter for the Office Aesthetics project. From vintage to new finds, most of the items in this collection are secondhand and found by myself or others, who have kindly gifted them to me. The artworks presented in this exhibition were made using almost exclusively materials from this collection. They aim to embody the ritualistic aspect of work, and to draw connections between office, artistic, and other forms of contemporary labor.
Paola Jalili
7° 59' 1.7160'' N / 23° 43' 39.1404'' E. AT STATE’S EMBRACE
BY YORGOS APOSTOLOPOULOS
In the 20th and 21st century the world has been materialized and formed by the image.
States and companies cooperate with each other to control the fixed images of reality and aesthetics with the aim of exploiting the image in order to create desires and manipulate the consciousness, the unconscious and the perception of reality.
One ride to mass media and you can see a grainy abstract advertisement of a car, a bank, a whiskey, or a lipstick made with super 8 film and right below five bombed children with a crisp and sharp image.
Photography, cinema and DIY art movements that once created aesthetics from a political and philosophical point of view and didn’t want any connection with mass media and the established norm, are now part of the established and mainstream media created by multi-million corporations and lesser companies manipulating and exploiting its original anti-establishment message and form.
The exhibition “37° 59' 1.7160'' N / 23° 43' 39.1404'' E. at state’s embrace” consists of polaroids, super 8 stills, 35mm photos and a short essay film.
The photography section explores mainly the city of Athens, the gloomy buildings, the daily lives of its people, details from the streets, the grim infrastructure, cancer towers, cancer roads, city lights, ads, flowers, trees, cats, some portraits of loved ones.
Some photographs are taken outside Athens, in rural Greece.
The short essay film is a visual and sound diary of a woman who just moved to Athens, Greece from another country. The film follows her audio tape recording on her 30th day in the city.
The film is shot with super 8 black and white film and some additional footage with a digital camera.
/ yorgos apostolopoulos /
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Oksasenkatu 11, 00100 Helsinki, Finland, Oksasenkatu 10, FI-00100 Helsinki, Suomi, Helsinki, Finland
