Niovi Kafantari Paints the Moment an Embrace Has Not Yet Decided
Opera Gallery Presents The Necessary Other in London
An embrace can mean tenderness, possession, or something neither person quite understands yet. In The Necessary Other, Greek artist Niovi Kafantari paints that uncertainty through bodies that meet, overlap and dissolve into colour.
Her first London solo exhibition is on view at Opera Gallery through November 8, 2026.
Niovi Kafantari
The Necessary Other
Opera Gallery London
London, United Kingdom
–
65-66 New Bond Street, London W1S 1RW
Federica Beretta and Giulia Lecchini
Eva Herzog (installation views)
Courtesy Niovi Kafantari and Opera Gallery London
Niovi Kafantari's first London solo exhibition, The Necessary Other, is on view at Opera Gallery London, 65-66 New Bond Street, through November 8, 2026, curated by Federica Beretta and Giulia Lecchini.
The paintings are oil on cotton, and the artist describes her method as one-field painting: the image is not built through successive corrections but has to emerge within a single continuous field.
What Was Promised was executed in roughly five to eight hours, she writes in the catalogue, after months of preparation. Other canvases start from smaller things: Last Tango from a marker drawing, Neighbor Imagined from a story a friend told her, My Father Introduced Me to Don Juan from Bergman's treatment of the myth. Below, the gallery's press release sets out how the exhibition reads these encounters.
Press Release by Opera Gallery London
The Necessary Other is the first London solo exhibition of Greek- London based artist Niovi Kafantari, presented at Opera Gallery London.
Bringing together recent paintings, the exhibition considers how identity is formed and transformed through encounters with others: through intimacy, desire, dependence, vulnerability and power.
Niovi Kafantari, Left) The Guest Who Wouldn't Leave, 2026, oil on cotton, shown in The Necessary Other, Opera Gallery London, London. . Courtesy Niovi Kafantari and Opera Gallery London. Niovi Kafantari, (right) Last Tango, 2026, oil on cotton, shown in The Necessary Other, Opera Gallery London, London. Courtesy Niovi Kafantari and Opera Gallery London.
Niovi Kafantari, (left) Just Met, oil on cotton, shown in The Necessary Other, Opera Gallery London, London, 2026. Courtesy of the artist. Niovi Kafantari, (right) A Pastoral Fragment, 2026, oil on cotton, shown in The Necessary Other, Opera Gallery London, London. Courtesy of the artist
Drawing on philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s thinking about relational identity, Kafantari approaches the human figure as something neither fixed nor entirely self-contained. Bodies meet, overlap, hesitate and withdraw; gestures of tenderness can also suggest tension or uncertainty. Her compositions occupy an unstable space between recognition and ambiguity.
Art-historical and cinematic references enter the paintings as material for reinterpretation rather than illustration. Echoes of Titian, Michaelina Wautier, Nicolas Poussin and Eugène Delacroix are transformed through Kafantari’s contemporary visual language. Expressive handling of oil paint, shifts in scale and passages of exposed or unsettled space allow the relationships between figures to remain open to interpretation.
The exhibition is curated by Federica Beretta and Giulia Lecchini.
Federica Beretta is Global Director of Opera Gallery Group. She previously directed the gallery's Bond Street space in London.
Giulia Lecchini is Deputy Director of Opera Gallery London and one of the authors of the exhibition catalogue.
About Catapult Contemporary
This is an exhibition feature published by Catapult Contemporary, an independent editorial platform for contemporary art, based in Vienna. We publish exhibition reviews, artist features, interviews, and critical context, with a focus on emerging and mid-career practices from Europe and beyond.
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