With an aesthetic rooted in nature, graffiti, and anime, Back presents work focused on the human figure. In his approach to creating images, the characters at the center of the scene seem to be in harmony with their surroundings, depicted in ways that suggest their emotions or, at times, appear expressionless. They are represented with a sculptural quality, occasionally drawing from digital aesthetics to create figures with soft curves and an ethereal appearance.

For Back, graffiti remains a key part of his identity, expanding his work and nourishing it with elements that interest him from every window he opens, allowing him to build his own unique universe.

Fran Baena (b. 1999, Priego de Cordoba, Spain) tries to establish a link with the adolescents of today and the dire tomorrow that seems to be coming, constructing a work that embodies a friend to cry with and laugh, in this way creating evidence of the aftermath of contemporary sadness, in the same way that rock and alternative music bands have done since the 80s.

His painting is particularly linked to the post-internet world, highlighting the poetic politics that implicate painting and the images consumed on the web. Paying special attention to the irony currently used to laugh at our mis- fortunes as a last resort, he does this through the analysis of sad and cynical memes and songs. His work is a record of the uncertainty of our contempo- rary tragicomedy, together with a deeply existentialist philosophy: Of being so alive that one only thinks of death. Because no depressed person wants to die, they merely wish to escape from life.

Scheroff’s work has undergone a significant progressive transformation since his early works of 2009, which were darker and clung to an exaggerated hyper-figuration – sometimes monstrous – to his current work, where colour, material, and fantastical characters take on a fiercely central role.

Scheroff’s early paintings are motivated by a sense of alarm over the constant flow of terrifying news from the media and the unsettling tension in which contemporary society seems to teeter. Through painting and installation, these works find a way to reflect on the great universal conflicts and their devastating consequences.

“We belong to a turbulent generation immersed in emotional instability; we inhabit a volatile territory where fascinating beauty is constantly marred by alarming social dramas. Without shame, I acknowledge that my work largely emerges from existential anguish, loneliness, disillusionment, or what we know as ‘millennial sadness.’ Always in search of an apparently impossible rationale for so much violence, apathy, and false promises. In my early paintings, I worked with heartbreaking images of large, fleshless faces that displayed human sadism, relieved by a luminous gaze that invited hope; humans are capable of materialising both the most benevolent acts and the most terrible ones.”

In his latest series of paintings, these initial concerns seem to still be present but from a less obvious and dramatic perspective, more whimsical and fun. Radical colour and thick oil strokes shape caricatured characters that unfold in scenes sometimes inspired by the works of the great masters of painting. These scenes connect with contemporary world situations, using icons of millennial culture, cartoon or kawaii aesthetics, or the acidic colours of pop and Neopsychodelia. With this parallelism, Scheroff tries to highlight that the conflicts of the contemporary world are not so far removed

from those that worried society in other eras and were reflected on large canvases. The fantastical characters that appear in Scheroff’s paintings, sometimes immersed in chaotic scenarios, ironically interpret the theater of the everyday and strive to highlight their brighter, more creative, and brilliant side.

“I believe that what has always interested me most about painting, what hooked me to it, was its ability to stir the viewer’s deepest emotions, how that fictional construction based on brushstrokes can provoke a reflective reaction in those who confront it.”