Getting a large-scale, technically ambitious artwork made is usually a fragmented process — funding from one place, studio access from another, a venue willing to show the finished (and often unproven) result from a third. The Onassis Foundation’s ONX program is trying to collapse that into one pipeline with ONX Relay, a new initiative that bundles commissioning, hands-on production support, and international touring together from a project’s very first pitch. Its opening slate is three large-scale commissions: Trevor Paglen, Maya Man, and Ben Frost.
Support built in from the start, not bolted on after
The core idea behind Relay is sequencing: instead of an artist securing funding, then separately finding studio time, then separately pitching finished work to venues, ONX folds all three into a single relationship that starts at the proposal stage. Selected artists get access to Onassis ONX’s studios in both New York and Athens along with ongoing staff consultation through the build — the kind of production infrastructure that’s usually reserved for institutions large enough to run their own R&D labs. As the foundation’s artistic director put it, the premise is that “artists need time, space, and support to experiment, take risks, and imagine what does not yet exist” — treating experimentation itself as something that needs deliberate infrastructure, not something that just happens if you hand someone a grant.
Three very different bets on what “tech-driven art” means right now
- Trevor Paglen — Neural Images: An immersive installation combining interactive experiences with large-scale paintings derived from AI-generated imagery, using the work to probe the relationship between artificial perception, neuroscience, and what a machine actually “sees.”
- Maya Man — Dreams Come True: A multi-channel video installation that filters celebrity, algorithmic culture, and generative AI through a fictional K-pop-inspired girl band — using pop manufacturing as a lens on how algorithmic systems now shape identity and desirability.
- Ben Frost — Prometheus: A large-scale multi-channel video and spatial sound installation reinterpreting Aeschylus’ classical tragedy through filmed performance and an original composition, pairing ancient material with a thoroughly contemporary production apparatus.
Why the model matters as much as the art
Individually, all three are the kind of ambitious, resource-hungry work that regularly stalls out for lack of exactly the infrastructure ONX Relay is promising upfront. Paglen in particular has a long track record of turning technical/institutional critique into gallery-scale work, which makes him a meaningful anchor for a program explicitly betting that better production infrastructure — not just more money — is the bottleneck holding back ambitious tech-art from getting made and actually touring past its debut. Whether Relay becomes a genuine template other institutions borrow from will depend on whether these three pieces actually make it out of Athens and New York and onto other stages — but as a stated model, it’s a rarer and more interesting move than another one-off commission.