One of the most characteristic themes of the current international context is the entrenching of figurative painting into conceptual ideas of art; creating images of abstract figuration. This is precisely the leit-motiv of our Gallery, and one of the central axes of our proposal for Art Dubai 2021.

Our Gallery’s line of work proposes a reflection on how modern life affects the way we understand painting today, and especially the capacity of artists for absorbing and taking in references from the world and the society that surrounds us.

Little by little, young artists lose interest in the political issues from the 20th Century- they have been replaced by new global discourses. It is no longer the artist’s mission to highlight the problems of society – not because they are no longer important, but because they are covered in excess by social media and 24-hour news. Instead they find a new path: they express themselves in new ways, with irony, carefree, even playful. They may expose modern day concerns, all the while still maintaining their optimism and humour. These are today’s times as we and our artists Eduardo Balanza, Ana Barriga, Julio Anaya, and Katsumi Hayakawa, understand them.

In our selection of artists that we have chosen to present, we have sought to defend the philosophy of painting that our Gallery maintains, structuring a coherent and intergenerational dialogue between our most recent and our oldest artists.

Ana Barriga (1984). Numerous prizes ensure her current status as one of the strongest painters in Spanish art. Her first exhibition in our Gallery ‘Ni trono ni reina’ (No throne nor Queen) in 2016 was perhaps the starting pistol for an unstoppable trajectory that grows daily, and speaks to us of her interest in revisiting figurative painting through the abstraction and ‘dismembering’ of objects. The contents of her work reference universal themes: sexuality, religion, politics, death, life… these are central themes that she addresses through humour, irony, and a sense of playfulness which lessens the dramatic charge that these themes implicitly contain.

Julio Anaya Cabanding (1987). Despite his youth, his entry into the international circles of art has been meteoric. For example, in barely a year he has been the subject of over 40 articles around the world about his work. He reinterprets the works of great classical painters on abandoned materials such as deteriorated cardboard he finds on the street. In successfully capturing the beauty of these masterpieces on literal trash, he invites us to question how we experience art and what we truly value in it. Currently, one can visit his new intervention at the Russian Museum of Malaga – St Petersburg: “Palacio Mijhailovsky. 125 accumulated years”.

Katsumi Hayakawa (1970) received his BFA from Nihon University College of Arts, Tokyo and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1998. Hayakawa’s works have been exhibited internationally at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, Japan; Yusto/Giner, Marbella, Spain; and, Rujswijk Museum, The Netherlands and throughout the U.S. His work is included in the collections of Louis Vuitton, Hong Kong and London; CAC Malaga, Spain; the American Embassy, Dubai; Target; and The Royal Bank of Scotland. Meticulously cutting each piece by hand, Katsumi crafts dense cityscapes where an interaction of line and primary colours coalesce with cubes and grids to create complex and vibrant rhythms. Once, paper folding was used to teach children geometry. He plays with this history of mathematical paper folding as a point of comparison to the perfection of urban cities. The paper cities are multi-textured invitations to look onto the rigid intricacy of urban life with airy simplicity.

Eduardo Balanza (1971) is a graduate of Audiovisual studies, having studied Documental Cinema and Film scripting at the prestigious ‘Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión’ in La Habana, Cuba during 1992-1993. He has participated in several workshops at the School of Visual Arts of New York (1999). He has also exhibited at the Kiasma Museum for contemporary art in Helsinki, La Conservera Murcia, Bethanien Kunst Raum Berlin, and has participated in festivals like Benicassim, SOS, and Escena Contemporánea in Madrid. His work develops multidisciplinary projects using identity and music as departure points for the filming of videos, installations, artists books, photography and sculptures. His line of work stems from an extensive reinterpretation and appropriation of popular music that is at the heart of today’s society. His work creates a feedback loop between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, overlapping Michael Jackson or Jimi Hendrix with classics like Beethoven or Bach through neon lights, cultural call backs, and a touch of humour.