#rexromae

Martin Whatson’s “FREE” at RexRomae.

Opening on December 3rd, 2020 at a pop-up RexRomae location in Dubai, United Emirates and curated by Rom Levy is artist Martin Whatson’s solo exhibition, “FREE.”

“FREE” is a new series of work by Martin Whatson, a major name in the international street art scene, to be shown for the first time in the Middle-East.

In a period of social and political volatility, images like science fiction tales, unfold themselves into the public walls. Over the past decade, Martin Watson, understanding the urge for social engagement, puts himself in the spot of the narrator, as he creates images filled with colors and movement that playfully re-appropriate the urban elements. Images that challenge the viewers and even the socially perpetual outsiders, to reveal themselves under a different light that the one, under which they are usually seen, capturing their interaction with their environments, in the most colorful way.

Whatson, who became widely known through his idiosyncratic calligraphic scribbles, filled with cultural references and subversive themes, returns with a new series of eye-grabbing imagery. Works that are socially involved in nature, delivering his commentary in a style that deliberately evokes a continuous dialogue on the decontextualization of urban sphere.

"FREE” is a solo show dedicated to this very same narrative. Dedicated to the ten years of Watson’s work and artistic evolution. New and old works, brand new images but even familiar ones with a twist, will be carefully selected and presented in Dubai, in total agreement with the given environment and its current happenings, seeking for the source of inspiration even in today’s sociopolitical decay.

-

Borondo ‘Animal’ at Londonnewcastle Project Space presented by Rexromae Gallery

05-26 Feb 2015

I love everything about Shoreditch. Not only is it filled with awesome pubs and bars and pop-up food spots and being right next to Brick Lane, it’s also packed with hipster shops that sells trendy things, little trendy bookshops, graffiti wall art at every corner and there's a Damien Hirst formaldehyde cow in a restaurant.

I discovered a massive gallery space with an incredible pop-up exhibition. ‘Animal’ is a solo show of Spanish street artist Borondo in collaboration with Carmen Maín (Spain), Edoardo Tresoldi (Italy) and Despina Charitonidi (Greece). I loved how he curated a storyline for the space like a Tate retrospective show:

Prologos

The Passage

Entrañas

The Order (Fear, Control, Captivity)

La Carne

Eternal

Albeare

Epilogos

'Animal' is a journey that explores our relationship with nature and the attempts to control it. It’s dark; gruesome at parts like the piece ‘Fear’- an image of a mother protecting her children is sprayed onto hay bales, it’s about how she projects her own fear onto her children- it’s interesting how unpretentious the press release is, it’s not like the well-worded major gallery writings. Borondo is an artist curating for the everyday people. In La Carne (Spanish for Meat), a naked girl is painted crawling around an illusionary box that reminded of Francis Bacon paintings (See also his depictions of meat). It’s about a struggle with the mundane and routine that she became domesticated like an animal. You also get to sit on hay bales like a farm animal.

The last space is a great show of Borondo’s paintings. I was surprised because they are very good paintings for someone they described as a street artist. I’m no painting historian but there’s a gestural similarity to superstar painter Jenny Saville that is not easy to achieve. I can see these paintings in any major gallery. Hard to believe the man is 25. Big things coming from Borondo, watch out for him.

In his upcoming exhibition ‘Animal’, the Spanish urban artist Gonzalo Borondo aims to explore the conflict between our innate animal instincts and our present lives, which are coated with the dependence of technology and our fear for the unknown. Borondo, a 24-year old prolific muralist, has taken over East London walls for the past year with his signature style of combining two genres; classic…