Two welcome hangouts in the capital

When the Benaki Museum coffeehouse opened along with the refurbished museum, it promised visitors a pleasant atmosphere and a respite from their tour of the museum. But its posh, more conventional style hardly made this a steady meeting place for the crowd of contemporary young artists. Long missing from Athens, a hangout for artists is now found in 365 café, a small coffee place/restaurant off Makriyanni Street. What makes this place distinct, and probably one of the reasons that it is so popular among artists, is the fact that one of its walls is reserved for the display of artworks that are shown through a series of temporary, one-man show exhibits all curated by Olga Daniylopoulou, director of the Spyropoulos Museum. So far, artists such as Angelos Skourtis, Christiane Klappert, Andreas Savva, and Wolfgang Faller have shown their work here, while in a few days, the coffee shop’s «art wall» will display a video work by Christos Prosylis. Another meeting place for artists is Alekton. Much larger than 365, this is a mini-arts center along with the nearby theater and a basement art gallery, running a full program and a coffeehouse that brings the crowd together in the middle. Curator at the National Gallery of Art, Lina Tsikouta, who has curated the art exhibits for this season, has made a choice of young artists, many of whom have not shown their work before. Yioula Hadjigeorghiou, the Cypriot-born artist who represented her country at the Sao Paolo art biennale just recently, made one of her debuts in the Alekton art gallery. Other artists who have exhibited their work here include Nikos Papadimitriou, Nikos Makarounas, Kriton Papadopoulos and currently, Yiorgos Divaris.