Pavlos Samios: Café Paradise

"Let's have a coffee over Zoom, I've missed you." There's a sentence we never thought we would use as much as we have in 2020. For Greeks, meeting for a coffee is as natural as breathing. Not being able to idle for hours at a traditional kafenio, or people-watch over some espressos, feels like social suffocation. For Pavlos Samios, a visit to a Greek kafenio was more than a favourite pastime; it was a cathartic experience where people connected through everyday things. In his mind, the famous Greek painter returns to his favourite haunt, café Paradisos at Platia Attikis, in search of that nostalgic connection. In Skoufa Gallery, Samios sets up a place of familiarity, like those he came to know in the Athenian and Parisian cafés during the 1980s. His exhibition Cafe Paradise is an homage to an old way of life, long before masks and social distancing, in order to ensure its perpetuity. If you can't make the show, visit the gallery's official page for some evocative words from Samios that paint a lovely picture of what this show means to him.