Victor Lope Gallery is pleased to present its new group show, a presentation of the space’s portfolio in which the work of Alejandro Pasquale, Max Gärtner, Patrik Grijalvo, Jo Hummel, Michael Craik, Mario Dilitz, Javier Ruiz and Alfredo Chamal can be seen.

Alejandro Pasquale’s work shows what we dream, where he compresses his particular and pictorial world. Magic is shown as the central theme; the mask as a constant trap; the game as the perfect script; nature as the absolute answer. All his work has revolved for years around these axes that he combines in different ways, producing in all cases a visual challenge to the viewer, who easily falls surrendered to the attraction of the perfect composition and the magnificent workmanship that he offers in each of the works.

Jo Hummel conducts experiments in which the process often determines the outcome and provides a safe stage for improvisation. A place where rational procedures can coexist with intuition. In this way, he explores the unpredictable nature of intuition and spontaneity. His practice functions as a simulation of decision-making experiences that allow him to capture and utilize sensations such as anxiety or serenity.

With his abstract representations of various creatures, the Spanish/German artist, Max Gärtner, explores the tensions and interrelationships between reality and the metaphysical, between the natural and the supernatural. After having completed his studies of graphic arts in Barcelona, Max Gärtner continued to be involved in a wide range of projects with the art collective Barri Groc. In addition, he also continued a side project as an illustrator and character designer.

Michael Craik‘s practice explores the interplay of color and repetition as a method of producing quiet, contemplative work that is concerned with color, quality of materials and process. Craik creates paintings by repeatedly applying paint and removing it again. This process of reduction appears throughout his work, alluding to the forces of erosion that shape our landscape. He allows the elemental qualities of paint to determine the appearance of each work, creating contemplative and minimal paintings.

Alfredo Chamal explores with a hyperrealistic language themes of his own everyday life, anecdotes that highlight the search and rescue of femininity through characters and objects that interact to form strange compositions, through surrealist drawings made with a ballpoint pen. The neatness of Alfredo Chamal’s technique and the use of an uncommon tool in the plastic arts, but everyday for the general public, are the connecting means with the spectator’s gaze.

Throughout his years of experimentation, Cesc Abad (Barcelona, 1973) has developed a special interest in man and his relationship and effect on nature. After years of studying the great masters of painting, he found his technical tool in the post-impressionist brushstroke and history in symbolism. This mixture leads to a work both figurative and conceptual, as a result of an introspective task from the point of view of nature, but which suggests many questions to the viewer.

There comes a moment in the career of a realist painter when he decides the form his discourse will take, or rather, how equidistant it will be from the tradition in which it is based. For Javier Ruiz Perez, that identity has taken different paths, such as urban art or figuration in the strictest sense. Now, that vision of the world comes to us with nuances, such as a subtle renunciation of detail in favor of an expressive brushstroke committed to everyday life.

The ability to give expression to the human form, to transmit and translate its language is a skill that sculptor Mario Dilitz definitely has. He combines traditional sculptural knowledge and technical skills with current issues and in this way manages to create sculptures of great intensity and appeal.

To make the work owe only itself to itself is an old ideal of modern art: to cut the ties that bind it to natural reality and let it stand, all contained within its pure limits. To take up this venerable pretension without falling into abstraction and, moreover, to do it from the photographic medium seems almost impossible. But Patrik Grijalvo has found a way to shore up the autonomy of his images. In this way, weakening its link with the real referent -without losing it- and vindicating its condition of object.